the sunshield, protruding beyond the edges of the shield. This results in a "degradation in science performance [which] will be relatively modest and mostly restricted to the faintest of Gaia one billion stars." Mitigation schemes are being implemented to improve performance. The degradation is more severe for the RVS spectrograph than for the astrometry measurements, because it spreads the light of the star onto a much larger number of detector pixels which each collect scattered light. This kind of problem has some historical background. In 1985 on STS-51-F, the Space Shuttle Spacelab-2 mission, another astronomical mission hampered by stray debris was the Infrared Telescope (IRT), in which a piece of mylar insulation broke loose and floated into the line-of-sight of the telescope causing corrupted data. The testing of stray-light and baffles is a noted part of space imaging instruments. Mission progress The testing and calibration phase, which started while Gaia was en route to SEL2 point, continued until the end of July 2014, three months behind schedule due to unforeseen issues with stray light entering the detector. After the six-month commissioning period, the satellite started its nominal five-year period of scientific operations on 25 July 2014 using a special scanning mode that intensively scanned the region near the ecliptic poles; on 21 August 2014 Gaia began using its normal scanning mode which provides more uniform coverage. Although it was originally planned to limit Gaias observations to stars fainter than magnitude 5.7, tests carried out during the commissioning phase indicated that Gaia could autonomously identify stars as bright as magnitude 3. When Gaia entered regular scientific operations in July 2014, it was configured to routinely process stars in the magnitude range 3 – 20. Beyond that limit, special procedures are used to download raw scanning data for the remaining 230 stars brighter than magnitude 3; methods to reduce and analyse these data are being developed; and it is expected that there will be "complete sky coverage at the bright end" with standard errors of "a few dozen μas". In 2018 the Gaia mission was extended to 2020. In 2020 the Gaia mission was further extended through 2022, with an additional "indicative extension" extending through 2025. The limiting factor to further mission extensions is the supply of nitrogen for the cold gas thrusters of the micro-propulsion system, which is expected to last until November 2024. The amount of dinitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and