The Gaia satellite is a high-precision astrometry, photometry and spectroscopic ESA cornerstone mission, currently scheduled for launch in late 2011. Its primary science drivers are the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia will achieve its scientific requirements with detailed calibration and correction for radiation damage. Microscopic models of Gaia’s CCDs are being develo...

We address the problem of identifying remnants of satellite galaxies in the halo of our galaxy with Gaia data. We make use of N-body simulations of dwarf galaxies being disrupted in the halo of our galaxy combined with a Monte Carlo model of the Milky Way galaxy. The models are converted to a simulated Gaia catalogue containing a realistic number (∼ 10 8 –10 9) of stars. The simulated catalogue...

This paper presents the architectural design of the GAIA interaction agent. Interaction agents implement the metaphor of the agent/personal assistant for computer-based environments that are innovative and rich in functionality thus have a tendency to produce information overload and are possibly difficult to use. Brokerage systems are typically such complex environments. The manner by which in...

We present the results of realistic end-to-end simulations of observations of nearby stars with the proposed global astrometry mission GAIA, recently recommended within the context of ESA's Horizon 2000 Plus long-term scientiic program. We show that under realistic, if challenging, assumptions, GAIA will be capable of surveying the solar neighborhood within 100{200 pc for the astrometric signat...

This paper presents a new approach based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), named PROMETHEE-SAPEVO-M1, through its implementation and feasibility related to the decision-making process regarding evaluation of helicopters attack Brazilian Navy. The proposed methodology aims present an integration ordinal into cardinal procedure from PROMETHEE method, enabling perform qualitative quantit...

Gaia is a fully-approved all-sky astrometric and photometric survey due for launch in 2011. It will measure accurate parallaxes and proper motions for everything brighter than G=20 (ca. 109 stars). Its primary objective is to study the composition, origin and evolution of our Galaxy from the 3D structure, 3D velocities, abundances and ages of its stars. In some respects it can be considered as ...

The Gaia satellite was selected as a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) in October 2000 and confirmed in 2002 with a current target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will gather on the same observational principles as hipparcos detailed astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic properties of about 1 billion sources brighter than mag V = 20. The nature of the measured ob...

When speaking of Gaia it is instructive to remember the first ESA mission dedicated to high precision astronometry HIPARRCOS launched in August 1989. HIPPARCOS can be considered as Gaia’s precursor, indeed the observing strategy aspects are similar and both missions were designed specifically for high precision astronmetry. After three and a half years of observations HIPPARCOS produced three c...

The Gaia ubiquitous computing platform currently supports mobile devices through a thin client proxy architecture. Mobile devices run a lightweight proxy client written in J2ME to join an active space. While this approach allows a wide variety of devices to interact with active spaces, it lacks the ability to use device specific functionality. This problem is addressed by combining the J2ME cli...

The Gaia hypothesis [Lovelock, J., Margulis, L., 1974. Atmospheric homeostasis: the Gaia hypothesis. Tellus 26, 1], that the earth functions as a self-regulating system, has never sat particularly comfortably with ideas in mainstream biology [Anon, 2002. In pursuit of arrogant simplicities. Nature 416, 247]. A lack of any clear role for evolution in the model has led to claims of teleology-that...