2 July

1985: On 2 July 1985, ESA's Giotto spacecraft was launched on board an Ariane-1 from ESA's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Giotto was ESA’s first deep-space mission. In 1986, it became the first spacecraft to fly past the nucleus of a comet, Comet Halley. Its images showed for the first time the shape of a comet nucleus and found the first evidence of organic material on a comet. In 1992, after a long cruise through space, Giotto was directed to Comet Grigg-Skjellerup. It sent back a lot of information, passing just 200 kilometres from the nucleus – the closest ever comet fly-by.