Title:Mapping the MilkyWay with Gaia

Abstract:
Gaia is ESA's ambitious space astrometry mission with a foreseen launch date in early 2012. Its main 
objective is to perform a stellar census of the 1000 Million brightest objects in our galaxy (completeness to 
V=20 mag) from which an astrometric catalog of micro-arcsec level accuracy will be constructed. The Gaia 
Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is an international consortium in charge the Gaia data 
processing. To achieve its targeted astrometric accuracy of a few tens of microarcseconds, a highly 
structured and complex processing of this data is required.
The spiral structure and kinematic of our Galaxy could be drastically changed or greatly improved due to the 
new data from Gaia.