Today, the ESA-operated Guiana Space Center, in South America, will launch an Ariane 5 delivery system, which will carry two new space telescopes, Herschel and Planck, to a transfer orbit. After several delays, the mission was finally confirmed a few days ago, and everything looks set for today's launch. The two observatories are already contained within their upper stage, and the rocket is safely docked at its launch pad.

Herschel, which is officially called the Far Infrared and Sub-millimeter Telescope (FIRST), will feature the largest mirror deployed thus far in space. The 3.5-meter behemoth will collect and interpret long-wavelength radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the Universe. The 7.5-meter-high observatory is in charge with determining exactly how galaxies form, and how they evolve to become the supermassive formations some of them get to be. Herschel will also carry the most powerful infrared equipment in history, and experts have huge expectations of it.

On the other hand, the smaller Planck telescope, originally called COBRA/SAMBA (Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy Satellite / Satellite for Measurement of Background Anisotropies), has a difficult mission as well, in that its objective is to survey the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This type of radiations can only be detected with radio observers, but it can yield significant knowledge of how the Universe itself came to be, as well as of why it looks like it currently does. In addition, experts are hopeful that data supplied by Planck will help with testing the existing theories on the formation of the Cosmos, as well as on its expansion.

The telescopes will be deployed to different orbits around the second Lagrangian point. The orbits chosen for the two observatories are very different as compared to those of regular satellites, or of others. The Lagrangian points, all five of them, are locations surrounding each planet, in which an object seems to be standing still, and thus remain in the same relative position to everything around it. This orbit was necessary because of the sensitivity of the observatories' instruments, which must be kept away from residual light, emitted back in space by the Earth and the Moon. The L2 point is located some 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, beyond the orbit of the Moon.