As often with the Soviets, it had two identical probes the French astronomers put an infrared spectrometer called IKS (“InfraKrasnoie Spektrometer” in Russian) on each. The project was accepted and renamed Vega (a contraction of Venera-Halley in Russian). But after flying over Venus, why not head to the comet? The Soviets would then take their revenge on the Americans. Venera-84 was a joint project aimed at exploring Venus. Meanwhile, in France, there was an active collaboration between the French space agency, CNES, and its Soviet counterpart. This was a challenge that had been met very satisfactorily: The launch by an Ariane rocket could take place on Jas foreseen.
The Giotto spacecraft was to be launched in July 1985, in time to reach the comet, which required that all the included instruments be ready by the end of 1984. Fortunately, ESA had decided in 1980 to develop its own mission: it would be the Giotto project, named in honor of the painter who depicted Halley’s comet in 1305, in a famous fresco in Padua, Italy. But ESA rightly feared an American defection, which actually soon occurred. Given its own financial problems, NASA offered to ESA in 1979 a joint mission to the comet.
The situation was most favorable in Europe, which had created a space agency, the European Space Agency in 1975. This would be realized much later by the Rosetta mission. But the public enthusiasm generated by the Viking missions to Mars fell because they did not show the presence of life on the planet, and NASA abandoned the idea of accompanying a comet in its movement. NASA demonstrated a great ambition, as it hoped to accompany the comet along its orbit, with progressive changes of the trajectory of the probe using ion propulsion, which is based on the ejection of ions accelerated by grids at high electric potentials.
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