In 1986, what was the name of the European data gathering spacecraft that intercepted the path of Halley's Comet?
Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby comet in August 2001, then would continue to fly beside Kopff. The spacecraft would take data for a total of two and two-thirds years, until about 109 days after they pass closest to the Sun and are outward bound again. It was to be the first time a spacecraft would have flown in formation with a comet, though a U.S. spacecraft, International Cometary Explorer (ICE), flew by Comet Giacobini-Zinner in 1985, spacecraft from several countries encountered Comet Halley in 1986, and the Giotto spacecraft flew past Comet Grigg-Skjellerup in 1992. The comet rendezvous would allow study of matter that scientists
Halley's Comet medieval European chroniclers, but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. The comet's periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named. During its 1986 apparition, Halley's Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation. These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple's "dirty snowball" model, which correctly predicted that Halley would be composed of a mixture