Gaia DPAC Project Office: Coordinating the Production of the Largest Star Catalogue

The European Space Agency mission Gaia is creating the most complete and accurate map of the Milky Way. It was launched in December 2013 to its orbit around the L2 Lagrange point. The extension of the mission until the end of 2020 has recently been approved. The Gaia archive is published and accessible to the astronomy community from its central hub at ESAC (ESA) (http://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/) and many other data centres around the world. Two Gaia Data Releases have been completed so far. The number of scientific papers based on Gaia Data Release 2 since it was published in April 25th, 2018, more than 400, gives an idea of the impact Gaia is having in the astronomy community.

The DPAC Project Office (PO), together with the DPAC Executive, is responsible for the coordination of the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, DPAC. Created in 2009, the PO is a key point to maintain the consortium closely coordinated and focused on the common goal of creating the best possible Gaia archive. A well balanced composition of the PO, including management, scientific and engineering expertise, is fundamental to accomplish its role in a very complex structure as DPAC, where common industry management practices are not fully applicable and speaking a common language to the scientists and engineers is critical.