ESA’s billion-star surveyor Gaia is now in its operational orbit around a gravitationally stable virtual point in space called ‘L2’, 1.5 million km from Earth.
Soyuz VS06, with Gaia space observatory, lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport, French Guiana, on 19 December 2013. Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja, 2013
Discussion: one comment
I was wondering whether or how much the Earth’s magnetotail affects the spacecraft at its L2 position. My guess is that any electromagnetic or radiation effects 1.5 million km downstream are probably negligible, but I was curious about whether the effect of episodic solar flare-geomagnetic events on the instruments are significantly different at this position.