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Comet Borrelly or
Borrelly's Comet (official designation:
19P/Borrelly) is a periodic comet, which was visited by the spacecraft
Deep Space 1Deep Space 1 is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies....
in 2001.
Discovery
The comet was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly during a routine search for comets at Marseilles,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
on December 28, 1904.
Deep Space 1 flyby
On September 21, 2001 the spacecraft
Deep Space 1Deep Space 1 is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies....
, which was launched to test new equipment in space, performed a flyby of Borrelly. It was steered toward the comet during the extended mission of the craft, and presented an unexpected bonus for the mission scientists. Despite the failure of a system that helped determine its orientation, Deep Space 1 managed to send back to
EarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
what were, at the time, the best images and other science data from a comet.
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