credit ESA / caption: after a number of delays Herschel and Planck finally go into space
An Arianespace EADS Astrium Ariane 5 rocket launches the European Space Agency's Herschel and Planck space telescopes on 14 May from the French Guiana spaceport. Herschel has, at 3.5m (11.4ft), the largest mirror ever launched into space (hear that Hubble!) and with the help of some US technology it will observe the infra-red spectrum while Planck will study the universe's ancient radiation from the big bang
More images of the launch can be found here along with an animation and even a twitter channel link. Find more animations and an update on the misson's progress here and read here all about the spacecrafts' journey to their L2 destination
And then there is some other mission going on to fix some ageing blurry eyed space telescope called Hubble, which, by the way, is an ESA, NASA collaboration. ESA has a 15% share of the project. Further info on the STS-125 mission for Space Shuttle Atlantis crew can be found here at NASA and all over the internet, here, here and here
credit NASA
on May 15, 2009 4:28 AM | Reply
Never underestimate the power of 400 million Americans reading the same Google search result, to make even the most rediculous missions happen.
on May 15, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply
Lobbying has been effective to keep an antique telescope working for another five years. Time and money could have been better spent by adding node 3 and copula to the ISS much sooner. But now we will have to wait until next year. Good luck to ESA with their innovative observatories in deep space.
on May 17, 2009 10:14 PM | Reply
Is it normal to say L2 and assume the earth-sun location versus the earth-moon L2?