The European Space Agency launches two powerful new flagship telescopes on Thursday to study space and time in more detail than in the past and give scientists a better and clearer window on the universe.  

The Ariane 5 launcher is to send the two observatories, Herschel and Planck, out to a position some 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, giving the astronomical instruments an ideal station from which to view the universe.

The Herschel and Planck launch comes during the International Year of Astronomy, a busy year for ESA, and is worth some 1.9 billion euros ($2.6 billion).

In addition to the two observatories, ESA is also set to launch three satellites this year that will acquire key data about ice, gravity and soils on Earth.

Pixar film Up has opened the 62nd Cannes Film Festival - the first time an animation has launched the event on the French Riviera.

A host of celebrities donned 3D glasses for the film, not in competition, about a curmudgeonly man who ties balloons to his house in order to get airborne.

Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton was among those on the red carpet.

Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp are also all due in town, with new films to promote.

Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia. And a bunch of other planes were sent that way too, so your flight was backed up and your journey took much longer than expected. That's basically what happened to some of our users today for about an hour, starting at 7:48 am Pacific time.

An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and "always on," so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again. All planes are back on schedule now.