On July 2, 1985, the European Space Agency launched the Giotto space probe to get a close-up look at Halley’s Comet.
Photos of Halley’s Comet Through History
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Nearly nine months after launch, on March 14, 1986, Giotto became the first spacecraft to observe of a comet up close when it flew by Halley’s Comet. It came within 370 miles of the comet’s surface.
Best Close Encounters of the Comet Kind
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
