Herschel, Planck Observatories launched
The European Space Agency launches a single Ariane 5 rocket to deliver a pair of unmanned space telescopes to the L2 LaGrange point trailing Earth. The super-cooled Herschel Space Observatory will search for objects at the far-infrared end of the spectrum, while the Planck Space Observatory will scan the microwave spectrum. Though both telescopes are sent to the same general region of space, they are entirely separate spacecraft which will operate independently of one another.