Launched in December 2013, Gaia is destined to create the most accurate map yet of the Milky Way. By making accurate measurements of the positions and motions of stars in the Milky Way, it will answer questions about the origin and evolution of our home galaxy. The first data release (2016) contains three-dimensional positions and two-dimensional motions of a subset of two million stars. The second data release (2018) increases that number to over 1.6 Billion. Gaia’s measurements are as precise as planned, paving the way to a better understanding of our galaxy and its neighborhood.
The AIP hosts the Gaia data as one of the external data centers along with the main Gaia archive maintained by ESAC and provides access to the Gaia data releases as part of Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC).