ScienceDaily -- The Herschel and Planck spacecraft successfully blasted into space at 6:12 a.m. Pacific Time (9:12 a.m. Eastern Time) on May 14 from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.
The European Space Agency missions, with significant participation from NASA, hitched a ride together on an Ariane 5 rocket, but now have different journeys before them. Herschel will explore, with unprecedented clarity, the earliest stages of star and galaxy birth in the universe; it will help answer the question of how our sun and Milky Way galaxy came to be. Planck will look back to almost the beginning of time itself, gathering new details to help explain how our universe came to be.
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See also:
Kepler Begins Search For Earth-like Worlds
My stars! Slideshow of Hubble's greatest hits
Double planet treat in the predawn sky
Astronaut to watch 'Star Trek' film in space
