The Universe's Data Hub
Thirty kilometers west of Madrid, the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) is the scientific center of the European Space Agency's (ESA) space science missions. This facility is where the science operations for all of ESA's astronomy and planetary missions are conducted. It manages the torrent of information sent back to Earth from spacecraft studying distant galaxies, nearby planets, and our own Sun.
The center's most ambitious project is processing data from the Gaia mission, which launched in 2013. Gaia's objective is to create a precise three-dimensional map of the Milky Way. Its third data release contains information on nearly 1.8 billion celestial objects. The total volume of science data collected by Gaia during its more than 10 years of operation reached over 141,000 gigabytes. This information is all received, processed, and archived at ESAC before being distributed to scientists worldwide. ESAC is also the science operations center for missions like the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, which investigates black holes and neutron stars. It also manages the scientific archives for past missions, including the Rosetta probe that orbited and landed on a comet.