  The GAIA satellite will observe the Galaxy and its closest satellites in
great detail. This should allow (i) dating past events of dwarf galaxies
merging or interacting with the Galaxy, and much improved orbital parameters of
the nine dwarf spheroidals and the Magellanic Clouds and (ii) dating of active
galactic nucleus (AGN) phases of the Galaxy several Gigayears in the past, by
detecting coeval star formation (e.g. open star clusters) that occurred along
kpc scale Galactic jets. Both predictions (i) and (ii) of past history will be
highly valuable for searching for or excluding topologically lensed images of
the Milky Way at high redshift.
