[Satellite Today 05-15-09] Arianespace launched the Herschel and Planck satellites for the European Space Agency (ESA) from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, Arianespace announced May 14.
   The two space observatories, built by Thales Alenia Space, will drift to reach a stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth to ensure the thermal conditions needed to observe some of the coldest radiation in the universe.
   The Herschel satellite is the largest-ever space telescope into orbit. Planck will study the origins of the universe and will be the first European satellite to study cosmic background noise — radiation of the very first light in the universe emitted more than 13 billion years ago.