The European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday will launch its space observatory Gaia from its spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at the start of a 5-year mission that should give scientists the most comprehensive 3-D map of the galaxy to date. 

Gaia’s giant telescope system was designed to take images of approximately 1 billion stars in the Milky Way, and is also expected to discover thousands of yet unknown objects in space. “From the information obtained, we hope to understand much more about the structure, contents and evolution of our Galaxy, how it came into being and why it is the way it is,” ESA said on its website.