The European Space Agency is on track to complete the most detailed 3D map ever made of the Milky Way, the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date.

According to a release from the agency, the Gaia satellite has pinpointed the exact position on the sky and brightness of 1,142 million stars. Researchers have released the first catalogue from the satellite, which also shows the distances and motions across the sky for more than two million stars.

“Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never been achieved before,” ESA Director of Science Alvaro Giménez said in the release. “Today’s release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our Galaxy.”

Mission manager Fred Jansen said during a news conference that the project has already collected about 500 billion measurements and he is “extremely happy” with the data’s accuracy, the Associated Press reported.

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The Gaia spacecraft is 33 feet wide and resembles a barrel sitting on a saucer. It carries two telescopes as it slowly orbits the sun. It started collecting data in July 2014, according to the ESA.

The first release displays data gathered during its first 14 months of scanning the sky up to September 2015.

Anthony Brown, head of the scientific consortium processing Gaia data, said the highly precise calculations represent "a revolution" in astrophysics. The high-resolution methods have already helped identify some 400 million new stars, the AP also reported.

The full atlas of 1 billion stars, which represents about 1 percent of the stars in the Milky Way, is set to be released near the end of 2017.