Written by Professor Andrew Coates, UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory

It was the year of the tragic Challenger disaster – but UCL-MSSL was making good news in space and making history too. The Giotto spacecraft carried 10 instruments, including one led by UCL-MSSL just 596 km (MSSL-ESOC!) from comet Halley on the night of 13^th/14^th March, with some spectacular results.

Giotto was ESA’s first solo interplanetary space mission, launched in 1985 on the penultimate Ariane 1 rocket. In many ways ESA itself can be thought of as ‘coming of age’ with this first bold step on its own out of Earth orbit. To date, Giotto collected the most complete set of data we have from a comet – the famous comet Halley.

Giotto approaching Comet Halley

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