GIOTTO

ESA's first deep space mission, Giotto was designed to help solve the mysteries surrounding Comet Halley by passing as close as possible to the comet's nucleus, which it achieved in March 1986. No-one expected the spacecraft to survive its battering from comet dust during this encounter, but although Giotto was damaged during the flyby, most of its instruments remained operational. The mission was extended to allow an unprecedented encounter with a second comet, Grigg-Skjellerup.The major objectives of the original mission were to :

• Obtain the first close-up images of a comet nucleus,
• Determine the elemental and isotopic composition of ices in the cometary coma and its dust particles,
• Study the physical and chemical processes that occur in the comet's atmosphere,
• Measure the comet's total gas-production rate, the amount of dust around the comet and its size/mass distribution,
• Determine the relative amounts of dust and gas in the near-comet environment,
• Investigate the interaction between the comet and the electrically charged particles of the solar wind.

Access to mission data

Access to mission documents