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Giotto

Giotto, ESA's first deep-space mission, launched on 2 July 1985 to meet Halley's Comet on its 1986 return. On the night of 13–14 March 1986 it flew within about 600 kilometers of the nucleus, closer than any of the international fleet of spacecraft that met the comet that spring.

Its Halley Multicolour Camera returned the first close images of a comet's nucleus — a dark, irregular body venting jets of gas and dust. Dust impacts near closest approach battered the spacecraft and ended the camera's work, but Giotto survived, and was later retargeted to fly past comet Grigg–Skjellerup in 1992.

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