Development of the CCDs for ESA GAIA cornerstone mission

The ESA cornerstone mission GAIA will perform astrometric and photometric measurements on one billion objects, and is due for launch in 2010 into L2 orbit. The key astrometric focal plane will comprise over 180 large area CCDs with a focal surface of about 0.5m 2 . The 45x60mm 2 CCDs for the focal plane will include technical features new to CCDs. This paper will discuss the characteristics of these devices, including the measures to improve the radiation hardness of the technology.