Taking advantage of the passing of Halley's Comet in 1986, the Giotto spacecraft passed within 600 km of the comet's nucleus on March 14, 1986, the closest of the several spacecrafts to fly by Halley. The spacecraft carried ten separate experiments built by member nations of the European Space Agency (ESA), under management of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC). The imaging experiment, originally conceived to compete for a slot on a joint NASA-ESA mission that NASA elected not to pursue, was of novel design and weighed far less than previous cameras. Enough instruments survived the encounter with Halley that Giotto was redirected to a second comet encounter.
From the description of Giotto (Space Science.): Oral history interviews, 1992-1994. (American Institute of Physics). WorldCat record id: 79356879
