GAIA talk: SUPA

The ESA Gaia cornerstone mission is due for launch on December 19th this year. With a mission lifetime of 5 to 6 years resulting in a final catalogue of typically hundreds of astrometric and spectrophotometric measurements of around 1 billion sources, Gaia is set to revolutionise astrophysics in the 21st century.

I will provide an overview of the mission, an update on its status and describe the contributions being made to the ground segment by the Institute for Astronomy within the SUPA School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.