ESA launches Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Satellite

The Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Satellite were both launched Thursday by an Ariane 5ECA rocket at around 1pm (UTC) by the European Space Agency (ESA) from the Guiana Space Centre. The two telescopes valued at €1.9 billion (£1.7bn) were launched from Kourou, French Guiana, a department of France in South America.

"The technology onboard these satellites is unique, and the science these satellites will do is fantastic," said Jean-Jacques Dordain director-general at the ESA, "This is the result of many years' hard work by thousands of scientists and engineers across Europe."

Herschel was released 26 minutes after launch to continue on its trajectory. Two minutes later, the Planck observatory separated. The Planck telescope is a survey telescope using Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements of the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Mexico presents first population-wide genome map for a Latin country

National Institute of Genomic Medicine of Mexico (Inmegen) Director Gerardo Jiménez Sánchez presented in Los Pinos the genome map of Mexicans, a stepping-stone for Latin American genomic medicine.

Previous endeavours of this kind had so far only covered some of the most ancient races on the planet, native from Africa, Europe and Asia, leaving out the recently admixed races of Latin America.

During the ceremony Jiménez, who led the project, symbolically presented President Felipe Calderón with a hard copy of the results. Calderón then uploaded the map to the Internet making it publicly available for researchers around the world. The President commented on the research being a step towards population-specific predictive medicine and medications, and particularly useful for Latin America for being genetically closer to the Mestizo peoples of those countries than genome maps published so far.

Among other results, the five year-long work found that, while sharing the 99.9% of the genome common to all humans, in the remaining portion the Mexican population has significant genetic variation from the world's other known genetic subgroups. This makes importing genome maps from other groups unfeasible, and hence justifies the study.

NASA launches Space Shuttle Atlantis

At 2:01:56 p.m EDT Monday, Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off above Florida on its two day journey to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to make repairs.

During the 11 day repair mission to the HST, astronauts will perform five spacewalks, installing two new instruments and repairing two others. The two new instruments are the US$126 million Wide Field Camera 3 and the $81 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. The instruments to be repaired are the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which failed on August 3, 2004 and January 27, 2007, respectively. The mission will also see the installation of a new Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit to replace the existing one.

"On Servicing Mission 4, we're going to give Hubble another extreme makeover. This makeover will be the best one yet because we will outfit Hubble with the most powerful and advanced imaging and spectrographic instruments available and we will extend Hubble's operating lifetime for five additional years," said Program Manager Preston Burch.