\section{Time line}

The Gaia satellite was launched on the 19th December 2013, and has now successfully been placed into orbit around  the second Lagrange point. Over the next few months the telescope will undergo system shake-down and ESA commissioning (Figure~\ref{fig:timeline}). It is planned that in June the Gaia satellite will spend a month scanning the Ecliptic Poles internally verifying the data, and learning how to identify large amplitude variable stars (potential contaminants of the Gaia Science Alerts stream). 