European Two Billion Dollar Herschel Space Telescope Begins Cosmic Observations

The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope opened the hatch that has been protecting its sensitive instruments from contamination earlier today to commence the observation campaign by allowing light collected by the giant 3.5m mirror to flood its supercold instrument chamber, or cryostat, for the first time, according to the BBC. View related video of the new European space telescope. The telescope's primary mirror is 3.5 m in diameter, more than four times larger than any previous infrared space telescope and almost one and a half times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, according to ESA.