The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched its Gaia satellite, which is expected to provide the first realistic picture of how the Milky Way galaxy is constructed.

Gaia was launched into space on a Russian-made Soyuz rocket from French Guiana at approximately 4:12 a.m.

The satellite will then head to an orbit known as L2 which is around 932,057 miles behind Earth, according to ESA.

 "The results from Gaia will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos as never before," said Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge University, and principal Gaia investigator, according to The Daily Mail. "We don't even know how much we don't know - there are sure to be objects out there that don't even have names yet, since we don't yet realize how strange they are."

Gaia approximately $1 billion to build. The spacecraft should arrive at its orbit in three weeks.

Once Gaia arrives at L2, it will then start to survey approximately one billion stars in the Milky Way. It will chart precise positions and motions of the stars to make a 3D map unlike anything ever seen before.

A 1,000-megapixel camera has been strapped to Gaia to find asteroids, comets, and planets "beyond the solar system" according to the Associated Press.

"This accuracy is equivalent to measuring a shirt button on the moon as seen from the Earth. It means we have to have the highest-capability computers to analyze the data," Floor van Leeuwen, manager of Gaia dataprocessing, said in a statement.

Gaia has been in development for over 20 years, and by the end of the decade it will have archived data that could exceed 1 million gigabytes or 200,000 DVDs of information.

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