ESA’s Cosmic Vision

David SouthwoodDirector of Science and Robotic Exploration

European Space Agency Paris, France

16 January 2009International Year of Astronomy Inauguration

UNESCO, Paris, France

Deep space astronomical observatories

Que veulent dire les petits chuchotements qui restent du Big Bang?

COBE

WMAP

Planck

The formation of stars

Gaia: a 3-D mapping of our galaxy

GAIA is going to detect and track :

109 (one billion) stars106 – 107 resolved galaxies500000 brown dwarfs300000 extrasolar planets200 gravitational lenses107 resolved binaries20 × 106 variable stars Tests of General Relativityand…..105 – 106 solar system objects

The numbers…..

The GAIA data challenge

• Over the nominal mission lifetime of five years, Gaia’s payload will yield a total uncompressed data volume of around 100 terabytes. The satellite will have contact with the ground station once a day for a mean duration of 11 hours, during which an uncompressed data volume of roughly 50 gigabytes will be down-linked at a rate of a few megabits per second.

JWST

LISA

Huygens landing site – habitable in 109 ans ?

[Schiaperelli 1877]

MARS in 1954