Comet Probes

Comet Probes gathers the space probes launched specifically to study comets, as distinct from the Asteroid Probes group that covers this atlas's other Space Probe missions to minor planets. As of the mid-2020s, twelve dedicated cometary missions had been launched by the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, the European Space Agency and China. Members of this group include the multinational Halley Armada of 1986, which sent the European Space Agency's Giotto and Japan's Sakigake and Suisei probes to Halley's Comet alongside Soviet and American spacecraft, as well as NASA's Stardust mission, which collected and returned dust samples from comet Wild 2, Deep Impact, which released an impactor into comet Tempel 1 to study its interior composition, and the European Space Agency's Rosetta, the first mission to orbit a comet nucleus and deploy a lander to its surface.