Giotto

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Giotto was Europe's bold opening statement in deep-space exploration, and it flew straight into the heart of the most famous comet of all. When Halley's Comet swung back through the inner Solar System in 1986 — its once-in-a-lifetime return — a small international fleet went out to meet it. The Soviet and Japanese probes hung back at a cautious distance. ESA's Giotto, named for the medieval painter who had depicted the comet as the Star of Bethlehem, was sent to do something far riskier: to plunge through the comet's coma and photograph its nucleus up close. No one had ever seen a comet's nucleus. On 14 March 1986, Giotto swept to within about 600 kilometres of it, flying through a blizzard of dust at 68 kilometres per second. The battering was ferocious; a grain struck the spacecraft and set it wobbling, and its camera was destroyed near closest approach. But before it was blinded, Giotto returned the first images of a comet's heart: a dark, peanut-shaped lump of ice and dust, blacker than coal, with bright jets streaming from its sunlit side. It was a revelation — comets were not loose snowballs but solid, ancient, sooty bodies. Battered but alive, Giotto was nursed back to health and sent on to a second comet, Grigg-Skjellerup, in 1992 before being switched off. It had turned Europe into a deep-space power and given humanity its first true look at a comet.

1. 1985Europe's first deep-space missionLaunch

   ESA launches Giotto to intercept Halley's Comet.

2. 1986Through the coma of HalleyFlyby

   Giotto returns the first close-up images of a comet's dark, icy nucleus, surviving a dust battering.

3. 1992A second cometFlyby

   The revived spacecraft flies past comet Grigg–Skjellerup.

4. 1992Switched offMission end

   Giotto is deactivated after a mission that made Europe a deep-space power.

Images

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