The end of a successful mission is an occasion to congratulate those who made it happen, along with the scientists who get to reap and make sense of the rich data harvest. In this case two such missions have reached or are close to the end: the Herschel infrared telescope built by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft. During its nearly four-year mission, Herschel returned stunning infrared images of some of the most distant and coldest objects in the universe, giving scientists new insights into the formation of stars, galaxies and even planetary systems. To date, some 600 peer-reviewed scientific papers based on Hershel observations have been published, with many more to come.
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