Gaia has successfully launched The European Space Agency has successfully launched their 32 foot satellite dubbed Gaia The satellite was launched atop a Russian built Soyuz rocket from the European spaceport located in French Guiana at 4am EST on December 19th Gaia will take an average of 40 million scans per day with its billion pixel camera enabling the satellite to observe each star approximately 70 times The massive amount of scans taken by the probe will allow scientists to create 3D maps of the universe The 3D mapping of stars is a field in science known as astrometry The satellite is capable of creating the 3D maps by comparing the individual scans and noting the changes to positioning of celestial objects over time This is a phenomenon known as parallax