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| .....The
Giotto mission was designed to study
Comet P/Halley. The major objectives of
the mission were to: (1) obtain color
photographs of the nucleus; (2) determine
the elemental and isotopic composition of
volatile components in the cometary coma,
particularly parent molecules; (3)
characterize the physical and chemical
processes that occur in the cometary
atmosphere and ionosphere; (4) determine
the elemental and isotopic composition of
dust particles; (5) measure the total gas-production
rate and dust flux and size/mass
distribution and derive the dust-to-gas
ratio; and, (6) investigate the
macroscopic systems of plasma flows
resulting from the cometary-solar wind
interaction. The spacecraft encountered
the comet on March 13, 1986, at a
distance of 0.89 AU from the sun and 0.98
AU from the Earth and an angle of 107
degrees from the comet-sun line. The
spacecraft was based as much as possible
on the ESA-GEOS spacecraft and was spin
stabilized with a rate of 15 rpm. |
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