Space Exploration (Europe)

The Giotto mission was designed to study Comet P/Halley, and also studied Comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup during its extended mission. The major objectives of the mission were to:

• obtain color photographs of the nucleus;
• determine the elemental and isotopic composition of volatile components in the cometary coma, particularly parent molecules;
• characterize the physical and chemical processes that occur in the cometary atmosphere and ionosphere;
• determine the elemental and isotopic composition of dust particles;
• measure the total gas-production rate and dust flux and size/mass distribution and derive the dust-to-gas ratio; and,
• investigate the macroscopic systems of plasma flows resulting from the cometary-solar wind interaction.
  

Ulysses is a solar probe launched in 1990 that has made the first-ever measurements of the Sun from a polar orbit. In route to solar polar orbit, it made a close flyby of Jupiter and made measurements of the solar system's largest planet.

• The primary objectives of the Ulysses mission encompass the properties of the solar wind, the structure of the Sun/wind interface, the heliospheric magnetic field, solar radio bursts and plasma waves, solar X-rays, solar and galactic cosmic rays, and the interstellar interplanetary neutral gas and dust, all as 3 function of solar latitude.

• Secondary objectives of the mission include interplanetary-physics investigations during the in-ecliptic Earth/Jupiter phase, measurement in the Jovian magnetosphere during the Jupiter encounter, the detection of cosmic gamma-ray bursts, and a search for gravitational waves.
  

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/history.htm
by: Miguel Sousa nº24 10ºB