Yes less transfer time is certainly beneficial. But for the arrival in the 2050s we are actually limited by the seasons and the amount of light. Enceladus spring starts around that time, it won't change much in terms of surface temperature (~100K) but before this time its even darker at the south pole. Its already only 1% of sun light so landing in complete darkness is making it even more challenging regarding visual navigation and scientific exploration.

Adding the ESA link with the English text : Link

So Gaia relies on maintaining very accurate pointing at the stars while measuring their position. For this purpose it uses special cold gas (Nitrogen) thrusters with very low flow noise. These cold gas tanks are now empty and Gaia simply cannot continue to operate.

Sniff, our most successful scientific Spacecraft by publications. The new Voyage 2050 programme certainly provides science topics that could lead to a worthy successor.

So glad to see that Arianespace is back in business. At least now it is also abundantly clear that Europe needs its own and sovereign access to space.

Glad this worked out, good to have both Launchers back in service. We need independent access to space for Europe.

Yes, not really the complete picture of what happened.

Would have there been actual damage to the system or even destruction if the software did not shut down? Or was the temperature threshold set too conservative? Did the thermal simulations not match the observed temperatures and if so why?

What's the solution to this problem now for the next flight?

Yes beautiful!

Rocket fuelled up now , so everything going ahead smoothly...

If it reenables European sovereign and independent access to space it's a success. Fingers crossed that it's also as reliably as A5. Commercially I agree.

So launch window start has been shifted by one hour according to my info: 21:00 - 00:00 Amsterdam/Berlin CEST.

Wohoo a proper launch thread. Thank you!

Let's hope they manage to launch at the beginning of the window.

So for Amsterdam/Berlin timezone that's starting at 20:00 tonight.