The European Space Agency on Thursday launched a project set to provide the first realistic three-dimensional mapping of the Milky Way, dpa reported. As a part of the mission, a highly precise telescope dubbed Gaia will orbit around the sun at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres beyond the Earth's orbit. The rocket was launched Thursday on a Russian Soyuz rocket, taking off from a space station in French Guiana. The aim of the five-year mission is to map more than a billion stars, thereby creating a three-dimensional map of their positions and movement in space. Scientists hope the information obtained will help them to better understand the structure and evolution of our galaxy, thereby shedding light on how it came into being. New data on the movement of stars is also meant to allow scientists to predict incidents like the meteorite that exploded over Russia in February.
