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From: freed@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Bev Freed)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Go-ahead for Giotto Extended Mission
Message-ID: <457.285B3398@nss.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: 16 Jun 91 05:35:52 GMT
Organization: The NSS BBS, Pittsburgh PA (412) 366-5208
Lines: 52

13 June 1991

ESA Release #18

GO-AHEAD FOR GIOTTO EXTENDED MISSION

At its meeting on 12 and 13 June 1991, the ESA Science Programme
Committee approved the recommendation of the Director of Science 
to accomplish the Giotto Extended Mission (GEM), i.e. to encounter
Comet Grigg Skejellerup, in the framework of the Agency's mandatory
science programme.  

Giotto, ESA's first deep space probe, was launched on 2 July 1985
by an Ariane-1 rocket from the Kourou Space Center and eight months 
later it encountered Halley's comet, producing remarkable pictures
of that famous comet's nucleus.  It was a highly dangerous mission;
but Giotto survived, and was put in hibernation two weeks after the 
spectacular encounter.  

Experts at ESOC (European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt,
Germany) reactivated the probe in March 1990: Giotto had been in
hibernation for four years and was a hundred million km from Earth.

On 2 July 1990, the spacecraft passed at a distance of 23,000 km
from our planet and the first ever Earth gravity assisted mission
sent Giotto speeding towards it new target: Comet Grigg Skejellerup.

Giotto will set yet another record in Space: it will be the first
probe to have encountered two comets.  

Activities for GEM are already underway -- the next major milestone
will be the second reactivation in the first week of May 1992, in
order to encounter Comet Grigg Skejellerup on 10 July 1992 around
3 p.m. GMT.  

Experts can already announce the time of the rendez-vous with
this great accuracy because ESOC has put the spacecraft on a very 
precise orbit, so that Giotto, even without additional orbit
correction maneouvres, will encounter the nucleus of Comet Grigg 
Skejellerup within a range of 15,000 km.  

With a few planned maneouvres, Giotto will come to within about
1,000 km of Grigg Skejellerup.  



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