Feb 28 1986
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
The Inter-Agency Consultative Group (IACG) on Halley’s Comet encounter was scheduled to meet March 4-9 in Moscow and March 12-14 in Darmstadt, Federal Republic of Germany. Formed in 1981, the IACG comprised representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Soviet Union's Intercosmos Council, Japan's Institute for Space and Astronautical Studies (ISAS), and the International Halley Watch.
ESA's Giotto, the Intercosmos Council's VEGA 1 and 2, and the ISAS Suisei (Comet) and Sakigake (Pioneer) spacecraft were launched in the previous 15 months to observe the Comet's passage around the Sun. NASA's Launching of a Spartan UV telescope and an Astro UV telescope to observe the Comet from Earth orbit was terminated because of the Challenger accident. But NASA's Pioneer-Venus spacecraft (launched in May 1978) had already completed five of its seven planned weeks of viewing the Comet, and the International Cometary Explorer spacecraft (launched in August 1978) was scheduled to monitor Halley's solar wind upstream. (NASA Release 86-19; P Inq, Feb 28/86; NY Times, Mar 4/86)
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