The proposal of a new astrometric space mission, GaiaNIR, was submitted to ESA in response to the call for Voyage 2050 and was recommended by the Senior Committee. Built on the Gaia principles, GaiaNIR is an astrometric mission in the near IR, candidate for the ESA Voyage 2050 L5 launch slot. The main goals are to explore the previously inaccessible components of the Galaxy, obscured by dust, in the near-IR and to achieve a significant improvement in parallaxes and, most importantly, in proper motions by combining Gaia's epochs with new observations over a 20-year period. Improved astrometry allows to enlarge the original Gaia science cases, from the details of the dusty spiral arms to exoplanets in dusty and star forming regions to IMBH embedded in clusters or wide binaries. We plan to identify which science cases can benefit from a GaiaNIR-like mission. Finally, this will ensure a revision of the Gaia reference frame.
The Spanish industry and scientific community, fully involved in the Gaia mission, join in this meeting to discuss the technical and scientific challenges of GaiaNIR. The most updated design and status of the GaiaNIR mission will be addressed by the international core team.
In this meeting we plan to cover the following topics:
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Mission overview: we count with the presence of Dr. David Hobbs (Lund observatory) to give a review talk.
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Technical challenges of the mission
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IR Astrometry scientific challenges & big science questions
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Round table with the Spanish industry
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Requests on simulations
- Synergies with other missions
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Round table on the actions for future Spanish enrollments
There is a small number of slots allocated for short talks. Please, submit your abstract using the Call for Abstracts before December 1st 2025.
The meeting will be hybrid.
Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC):
- Giuseppina Battaglia (IAC)
- Jose Caballero (CAB)
- Josep Manel Carrasco (UB)
- Minia Manteiga (UdC)
- Mercè Romero-Gómez (UB, Chair)
- Rainer Schödel (IAA)
