David Hobbs

David's main scientific interests are focused on space astrometry with the  European Space Agency mission Gaia. The mission was launched towards the second Lagrange point in late 2013 and is determining accurate astrometric data for almost two billion objects in the magnitude range from 6 to 20.7. Accuracies of 10s of microarcsec (yr^-1) are typically expected for the trigonometric parallaxes, positions at mean epoch, and annual proper motions of simple (i.e., apparently single) stars down to 15th magnitude. The astrometric data are complemented by photometric and spectroscopic information collected with dedicated instruments on board the Gaia satellite. The missions first results became available in 2016 with subsequent releases in every few years. Gaia will eventually result in an astronomical database of unprecedented scope, accuracy and completeness with the final results becoming available to the scientific community around 2030.

David joined Lund Observatory in 2007 to help develop the core Astrometric Global Iterative Solution for ESA's GAIA mission. Within this group he contributes to the development of data processing algorithms and studies of fundamental physics results from the mission. Examples include: astrometric source processing, micrometeoroid handling in the attitude processing, reference frame rotation and tests of general relativity.

David has also led proposals for a successor mission GaiaNIR since 2016. Such a new all-sky Near InfraRed (NIR) astrometric mission will expand and improve on the science of Gaia using basic astrometry. NIR astrometry is crucial for penetrating obscured regions and for observing intrinsically red objects. The new mission is aimed at surveying around 12 billion stars in the Galaxy, revealing important new regions obscured by interstellar gas and dust while also improving on the accuracy of the previous results from Gaia. The mission will explore the Galaxy, particularly the very important hidden regions, to reveal nature's true complexity and beauty in action.

David spent a number of years developing the flight-critical onboard software for the XMM-Newton and Integral observatories. He was also involved in developing precise orbit determination techniques for low Earth orbit satellites. He spent a number of years working on spacecraft attitude control algorithms for the Herschel and Planck missions.