A New Mission Could Rendezvous With Halley's Comet In 2061
Researchers have proposed a new mission architecture to rendezvous with Halley's Comet in 2061 using gravity assists from Jupiter and Saturn. This approach would allow for a long-term study of the comet, overcoming the limitations of previous flyby missions.
Why it matters
A successful rendezvous would provide unprecedented data on cometary surfaces, helping scientists better understand the origins of the solar system.
Halley’s comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the Sun (admittedly when this author, who is now middle-aged, was one year old in 1986), humanity responded with a fleet of spacecraft known informally as the “Halley Armada”. Yet, because of the comet’s trajectory, those spacecraft were only able to visit their target for a fleeting few hours, leaving planetary scientists wanting more. Now, a new paper by researchers at Khalifa University and their co-authors, and available in pre-print on arXiv, describes a mission plan that would allow a spacecraft to actually rendezvous with this most well-known comet for the first time ever.
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