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...European spacecraft makes some surprising discoveries about the frozen core of Halley's comet, and survives a dusty encounter...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Table of Contents: March 24, 1986 | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...Soviet coup. Just as U.S. television cameras were showing the Navy recovery ship, the U.S.S. Preserver, bringing to Port Canaveral its dolorous cargo in a flag-draped container last week, Soviet television was beaming to the world images of a triumph: the successful launch of a Soyuz spacecraft that carried a pair of cosmonauts to the Soviets' newest space station. Normally, the Soviets announce space shots only after they have been safely launched. Though last week's "live" telecast appeared to be risky--what if something had gone wrong?--the Soviets actually hedged their bet. They appeared to have built...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Painful Legacies of a Lost Mission | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...Giotto spacecraft and Halley's comet raced toward each other last week at a closing speed of 155,000 m.p.h., the tension at the European Space Agency's control center in Darmstadt, West Germany, became palpable. Images of the cornet, relayed to the center at intervals of four seconds, loomed larger and larger on television screens, finally yielding by far the best look yet at an elongated shape near Halley's heart. It was the comet's nucleus. Giotto Investigator Wolfgang Schmidt, giving a play-by-play description of the images, could not contain his excitement. "It's obvious that...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Space: Peering into Halley's Heart | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...worst fears of the international Giotto team, it seemed, had been realized. Fully aware of the dangers of meeting any outsize dust particles at the tremendous speed of encounter but determined to get a closeup look, the scientists had aimed the spacecraft to swoop only 338 miles from Halley's dust-shrouded nucleus. That, according to Roger Bonnet, ESA's director of scientific programs, was like playing Russian roulette: "You may survive, but one shot will kill...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Space: Peering into Halley's Heart | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...indeed a gamble. In the last seconds before the encounter, Giotto ran into what one scientist described as a "wall of dust the size of grains of sand." The spacecraft's protective dust shields were peppered with particles at a rate of 100 impacts a second, a bombardment that swung its antenna out of alignment with a tracking station in Australia. That brought communications to a halt. But before the blackout, Giotto relayed more than 2,000 images of Halley's back to earth, plus a torrent of data from the ten on-board instruments...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Space: Peering into Halley's Heart | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

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