The Gaia NIR mission and the engagement of the Spanish Community

28 Jan 2026, 09:30 → 30 Jan 2026, 14:00 Europe/Madrid

Agencia Espacial Española (AEE) headquarters in Sevilla

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:

• Mission overview: we count with the presence of Dr. David Hobbs (Lund observatory) to give a review talk.

• Technical challenges of the mission

• IR Astrometry scientific challenges & big science questions

• Round table with the Spanish industry

• Requests on simulations

• Synergies with other missions

• 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)

Registrations GaiaNIR Sevilla 04122025.pdf

Right of information in relation to the data processing Gaia NIR.pdf

Wednesday 28 January

09:30 → 11:00 REG (I)

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 → 13:00 REG (II)

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:40 Mission overview

15:00 Welcome and summary of the ministerial meeting

Speaker: Isabel Pérez Grande (TBC)

15:15 Spanish industrial partners, current developme

Speaker: Cecilia Hernández (TBC)

15:30 Voyage 2050: GaiaNIR in context

Speaker: TBC (TBC)

15:45 The GaiaNIR mission and the hidden regions of our Galaxy, including the inclusion of RVS and end-of-mission accuracies

Speaker: David Hobbs

16:25 Reflections from Gaia

Speaker: Anthony Brown (TBC)

16:40 → 17:10 Coffee Break

17:10 → 18:30 Tecnical Challenges

17:10 The current detector study

17:30 A huge challenge: onboard and on ground data processing

Speaker: Dr Jordi Portell de Mora (ICCUB)

17:50 Radial velocity calculations for GaiaNIR

Speaker: Mészáros Szabolcs

18:10 The GaiaNIR photometry

Speaker: Josep Manel Carrasco Martínez (Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya)

Thursday 29 January

09:30 → 10:50 IR Astrometry: big science questions (I)

09:30 The Galactic nucleus

Speaker: Francisco Nogueras-Lara

09:50 Bulge and Galactic bar (VVV, MOONS, LSST)

Speaker: Óscar A. González

10:10 Dwarf galaxies

Speaker: Giuseppina Battaglia

10:30 XMC dynamics (SDSS-V)

Speaker: Óscar Jiménez

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee Break

11:20 → 13:00 IR Astrometry: big science questions (II)

11:20 Relativistic effects impact on the astrometric model & Celestial reference frame

Speaker: Gabriel Rodríguez Moris (Lohrmann Observatory, Technische Universität Dresden)

11:40 Low mass stars in IR

Speaker: Miriam Cortés Contreras (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

12:00 White dwarfs

Speaker: Santiago Torres Gil (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

12:20 High mass stars & star forming regions

Speaker: Sara Berlanas

12:40 Exoplanets

Speaker: Juan Carlos Morales / Manuel Perger

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:30 Industry

15:00 Round table with industry

Speaker: Different industry representatives

16:30 → 17:00 Coffee Break

17:00 → 18:30 IR Astrometry: big science questions (III)

17:00 Solar system

Speaker: Rene Duffard (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía - CSIC)

17:15 Oral contribution

17:30 Oral contribution

17:45 Oral contribution

18:00 Oral contribution

18:15 Oral contribution

Friday 30 January

09:30 → 10:50 GaiaNIR: request for simulations

09:30 The GaiaNIR simulator and BGM

Speaker: Xavier Luri / Eduard Masana

09:50 The Jasmine simulator

Speaker: Pau Ramos

10:10 Kinematics of dwarf galaxies in M31 and the Local Group

Speaker: Isabel Santos-Santos

10:30 Modeling the MW exoplanets

Speaker: Chloé Padois (Universitat de Barcelona - ICCUB)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee Break

11:20 → 12:40 GaiaNIR Sinergies

11:20 Roman & HAYDN

Speaker: Friedrich Anders (Universitat de Barcelona)

11:40 Euclid

Speaker: Eduardo Martín

12:00 Rubin - LSST

Speaker: Laura Toribio San Cipriano (CIEMAT)

12:20 HWO & LIFE

Speaker: José A. Caballero (Centro de Astrobiología CSIC-INTA)

12:40 → 13:30 Next steps: actions for future Spanish enrolments

Round table