66 European planetary missions
Description
This article is from the Space FAQ, by Jon Leech leech@cs.unc.edu and Mark Bradford tla@surly.org with numerous contributions by others.
66 European planetary missions
GIOTTO was launched by an Ariane-1 by ESA on July 2 1985, and approached
within 540 km +/- 40 km of the nucleus of comet Halley on March 13,
1986. The spacecraft carried 10 instruments including a multicolor
camera, and returned data until shortly before closest approach, when
the downlink was temporarily lost. Giotto was severely damaged by
high-speed dust encounters during the flyby and was placed into
hibernation shortly afterwards.
In April, 1990, Giotto was reactivated. 3 of the instruments proved
fully operational, 4 partially damaged but usable, and the remainder,
including the camera, were unusable. On July 2, 1990, Giotto made a
close encounter with Earth and was retargeted to a successful flyby of
comet Grigg-Skjellerup on July 10, 1992.
A much more complete description of the Giotto Extended Mission is in
ftp://ftp.cs.unc.edu/pub/users/leech/FAQ/GiottoHistory.gz
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