Herschel's Observatory Cover Flips Open

The Herschel observatory has flipped its lid -- the cover protecting the telescope's instruments was successfully removed on June 14, 2009, at 2:54 a.m. Pacific Time. Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with significant participation from NASA, is already well on its way to an orbit around a point 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. That location, called the second Lagrange