Japanese Probe to Halley's Comet . Courtesy of NASA's National Space Science Data Center . Suisei (the Japanese name meaning `Comet') was launched on March 18, 1985, into heliocentric orbit to fly by Comet P/Halley . ... Fifteen burns of Suisei's 3-Newton motors over 5 - 10 April 1987, yielded a 65 meters (213 feet) per second velocity increase for a 60,000 kilometer (37,000-mile) Earth gravity assist swingby on August 20, 1992, although the craft was then lost behind the Sun for the summer. ...

Cosmic Research, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 435­488. Translated from Kosmicheskie Issledovaniya, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 453­508. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Veselovsky, Panasyuk, Avdyushin, Bazilevskaya, Belov, Bogachev, Bogod, Bogomolov, Bothmer, Boyarchuk, Vashenyuk, Vlasov, Gnezdilov, Gorgutsa, Grechnev, Denisov, Dmitriev, Dryer, Yermolaev, Eroshenko, Zherebtsov, Zhitnik, Zhukov, Zastenker, Zelenyi, Zeldovich, Ivanov-Kholodnyi, Ignat'ev, Ishkov, Kolomiytsev, Krasheninnikov, Kudela,