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Giotto Extended Mission

The Giotto spacecraft was launched on 2 July 1985 to study comet 1P/Halley. The spacecraft carried instruments to image the nucleus, analyze components of the cometary coma, the cometary atmosphere and ionosphere, cometary dust particles, and plasma flows resulting from the interaction of cometary and solar wind. Giotto encountered comet 1P/Halley on 13 March 1986 and came within 596 km of the nucleus. Following the encounter Giotto was placed into a hibernation mode. The spacecraft was reactivated for an extended mission in 1992. Giotto encountered comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup on 10 July 1992 and came within a distance of approximately 200 km of the nucleus. Spacecraft operations were terminated on 23 July 1992.

The SBN is the lead PDS node for archiving Giotto data which are also available through the ESA Planetary Science Archive.

On-Board Instruments

• Instrument Details (Data from these instruments are archived at SBN.)
  • Dust Impact Detector System (DID)
  • Energetic Particle Analyzer (EPA)
  • Radio Science Experiment (GRE)
  • Halley Multimeter Camera (HMC)
  • Ion Mass Spectrometer (IMS)
  • Johnstone Plasma Analyzer (JPA)
  • Magnetometer (MAG)
  • Optical Probe Experiment (OPE)
  • Particle Impact Analyzer (PIA)
• Other Instruments (Spacecraft has other instruments, data from which are archived at another PDS node.)
  • Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) - Composition and energy of neutral gas in the coma
  • RPA-(Réme) Copernic Plasma Experiment (RPA) - Velocity distributions of electrons; composition/distribution of thermal positive ions near comet

Mission Data

• Giotto Dust Impact Detector Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Energetic Particle Experiment Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Radio Science Experiment Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Ion Mass Spectrometer, High-Intensity Spectrometer Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Combined Particle Analyzer/Magnetometer Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Johnstone Particle Analyzer Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Fluxgate Magnetometer Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup
• Giotto Optical Probe Experiment Observations of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup

Related Datasets

Use the Small Bodies Data Ferret to find other datasets for this mission/target.