Two of the most sophisticated astronomical spacecraft ever built – Herschel and Planck – will be launched by ESA tomorrow, May 14, 2009, and placed in deep space orbits around a special L2 Lagrangian observation point -- a gravitationally stable Sun-Earth point suspended in space some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. From there, both observatories will begin a revolutionary campaign that will further our understanding of the Universe. Herschel is a far-infrared space telescope designed to study some of the coldest objects in space, in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum still mostly unexplored. Planck is a telescope that will map the original light of the Universe - light from the Big Bang – with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy.