Today an Ariane 5 rocket successfully propelled the Herschel and Planck satellites towards their final orbits, around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. This is the thirtieth successful Ariane 5 launch in a row. Signal from both Herschel and Planck was picked up by the ESA deep-space ground station in New Norcia, Australia, and transmitted to the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

On the whole, a great day for Europe in space.

And I'll still have a job tomorrow, but that was not the important part.

You can watch the Ariane 5 launch on the BBC website.

Photo credits: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE - Photo Optique Video CSG, P. Baudon, 2009.