Two billion stars, one mission ✨ For over a decade, our Gaia spacecraft has transformed how we see our galaxy. Since 2014, Gaia has mapped the precise positions and motions of two billion stars and other objects, creating the most detailed 3D atlas of the Milky Way ever made. Gaia revealed stars shrinking, swelling and even “quaking.” It discovered tidal tails stretching thousands of light-years, spotted new stellar clusters, and showed us how star families form, drift apart, and how stars sometimes escape their birthplace. Now retired, Gaia’s greatest discoveries may still be ahead: most of its treasure trove of data has yet to be released. Astronomers will be mining its catalogues for decades, rewriting the history of our cosmic neighbourhood. 📹 @europeanspaceagency 🎞️ ESA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC, @creativecommons BY-SA 3.0 IGO, Acknowledgments: S. Jordan/T. Sagrista; ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Data: M. Kounkel & K. Covey (2019); Animation: S. Jordan / T. Sagristá /...