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When the Orion spacecraft passes the far side of the moon later today, the Artemis II crew will reach 252,760 miles (406,778 kilometers) away from Earth.

While they will be farther than any humans have ever traveled, the crew will be only a quarter of the distance to Lagrange Point 2 (L2), where the James Webb Space Telescope observes the universe. Webb orbits L2—which is about a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away—because the balance of the combined gravitational pull of the Sun and the Earth at the L2 point means that Webb keeps up with the Earth as it goes around the Sun.

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The James Webb Space Telescope orbits the Sun near Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), approximately 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Earth. L2 is one of five Sun-Earth Lagrange points, positions in space where the gravitational pull of the Sun and Earth balance the orbital motion of small objects (like spacecraft or asteroids). At these points in space, the gravity of the two large objects balances the orbital motion of the third object. Lagrange points can be used by spacecraft to reduce propellant consumption needed to remain in position. Objects in that region have the same orbital period (length of year) as Earth. As the Earth moves around the Sun the L2 point moves as well, so the Sun, Earth, and L2 always form a straight line. This makes it possible for Webb to remain in constant communication with Earth, since it is always in the same direction and at roughly the same distance from our planet. Webb is not located exactly at L2, but instead orbits L2, completing one circuit every 168 days. This "halo orbit" around L2 is highly elliptical and is roughly perpendicular to its orbital path around the Sun. The distance between Webb and L2 varies between about 250,000 and 830,000 kilometers (150,000 to 500,000 miles). Because of this complex orbit, Webb's precise distance from Earth varies over time. Sizes and distances in this illustration are not to scale. Credit: NASA, STScI.

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Europe launches satellite to map 1 billion stars

By Frank Jordans and Danica Coto, AP, Dec 19, 2013

BERLIN (AP)--The European Space Agency launched its star-surveying satellite Gaia into space Thursday, hoping to produce the most accurate three-dimensional map of the Milky Way and to better understand the evolution of our galaxy.

Soon after the launch, Gaia unfurled its 10-meter (33-feet) circular sun shield--a crucial moment in the mission. The shield protects the spacecraft's sensitive instruments from the rays of the sun while simultaneously collecting solar energy to power the spacecraft.

"Everything was super smooth," said Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at the Paris-based European Space Agency.

Gaia is now heading for a stable orbit around a point known as Lagrange 2--some 1.5 million kilometers (930 million miles) away on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun. Once it gets there next month, the satellite's instruments will be switched on and it will follow what Ferri described as "a very peculiar pattern" designed to keep its back always turned to the sun.

Timo Prusti, ESA's project scientist, likened the mission's goal to the switch from two-dimensional movies to 3D. At the moment, he said scientists are working with a largely "flat" map of the galaxy.

"We want to have depth," he said.

Using its twin telescopes, Gaia will study the position, distance, movement, chemical composition and brightness of a billion stars in the galaxy, or roughly 1 percent of the Milky Way's 100 billion stars.

The data will help scientists determine the Milky Way's origin and evolution, according to Jos de Bruijne, deputy project scientist for the Gaia program.

"The prime importance of this mission is to do galactic archaeology," he said in a phone interview from French Guiana.

The project is the successor to ESA's Hipparcos satellite, which was launched in 1989 and measured the position of 100,000 stars in the Milky Way.

Gaia, which is named after an ancient Greek deity, will go far beyond that. Scientists have compared its measuring accuracy to measuring the diameter of a human hair from 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away.

Equipped with dozens of cameras capable of piecing together 1,000-megapixel images, scientists also expect to find hundreds of thousands of previously undiscovered asteroids and comets inside our solar system.

Beyond that, scientists hope that Gaia can also be used to test a key part of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity that predicts "dips" and "warps" in space caused by the gravity of stars and planets.

Carmen Jordi, an astronomer at the University of Barcelona who is involved in the mission, said the satellite's findings will become the main reference for scientists in the years to come.

"Almost all the fields of astrophysics will be affected," said Jordi.

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