The Italian contribution to the Gaia data processing and archiving

Gaia is an ESA Cornerstone mission, scheduled to be launched in spring 2013, dedicated to precisely measure the positions and motions of over a billion stars in our galaxy: the Milky Way. Gaia Data Processing Center Turin (DPCT), the Italian DPC, is hosted and operated at ALTEC in Turin. The primary objective of DPCT is to provide the infrastructure and operations support to the Astrometric Verification Unit (AVU) activities for CU3 and the Italian participation to the Gaia data processing tasks. DPCT will archive all of the data, produced for and delivered to DPAC as part of the Italian contribution to the activities of CU4, CU5, CU7, and CU8.