Bet your journey to work today wasn't as exciting at this. Gaia, the European Space Agency's latest cosmic explorer, blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from French Guiana at 0912 GMT this morning, lighting up the surrounding jungle. The spacecraft is now en route to its workplace, a location known as L2.
L2 is a moving point in space that is always on Earth's night side, 1.5 million kilometres away. The alignment of the gravitational forces between the sun and Earth means that any object in this location stays stationary with respect to the Earth and sun. This means L2 is often used for space missions – ESA's Herschel telescope was positioned there until earlier this year.
Gaia should arrive at L2 in around three weeks' time, where it will begin its five-year mission to map the location of around a billion stars in the Milky Way. Astronomers hope to use this map to learn how our galaxy formed.
Read more: "Ultimate selfie: Space megacamera will map Milky Way
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