Stellar stuff: outreach programme brings Gaia into schools

A Cambridge-led outreach project is connecting over 2,200 pupils with the excitement of ESA's Gaia mission through a Q&A session that will take place tomorrow with the discussion streamed live to schools throughout Europe. We want the pupils to see for themselves how European centres are working together on this space project that will revolutionise our knowledge of the Milky Way and the Universe more generally. Nicholas Walton Will Gaia discover habitable planets similar to the Earth? Is the Universe infinite? Could Gaia be hit by a piece of space debris as in the film Gravity? How many planets are there in the Milky Way? Children often ask the best questions. These ones come from pupils at schools in Italy, France, Poland and the UK. Their requests for information about space and our Universe are just of the dozens of questions that will be answered tomorrow by top space scientists as part of a live event. The online Q&A session will link a total of more than 70 institutions across Europe in an ambitious initiative designed to engage school pupils in the excitement of astronomy in general and the science of the Gaia programme, in particular. Tomorrow's event is the culmination of an educational outreach project, called Gaia Live in School, which connects more than 2,000 children at 34 schools with leading European space research institutions.