Page 34 - Italy In Space
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Interplanetary Probes
July 2, 1985. GIOTTO, the ESA's first deep space mission, is launched from Kourou. Originally it was
conceived as an ESA-NASA cooperation, but NASA canceled the mission due to budget cuts. Europe decided
to launch Giotto on its own, with Ariane. Several Italian industries (including Laben and Fiar) contributed to the
project. Commemorative cover cancelled at launch in Kourou with the special Ariane-1 manual postmark.
March 13, 1986, closest approach to Halley's nucleus (310 miles = 596 km). Giotto successfully passed Halley and
survived, finding evidence of organic material in a comet. In 1992 Giotto was directed to Comet Grigg-Skjellerup,
thus becoming the first spacecraft to meet two comets. Commemorative cover, cancelled with the special postmark
in Darmstadt, where is based the ESA-ESOC (European Space Operation Center), monitoring the satellite.
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