19P/Borrelly


Comet Borrelly or Borrelly's Comet is a comet with a period of 6.85 years that was visited by the Deep Space 1 spacecraft in 2001. The comet last came to perihelion on 1 February 2022 and will next come to perihelion on 11 December 2028.
Date & time of
closest approach		Earth distance
Sun distance
Velocity
wrt Earth
Velocity
wrt Sun
Uncertainty
region
Reference
2028-Dec-05 19:12 ± 6 min17.333.3± 35 thousand km

Deep Space 1 returned images of the comet's nucleus from 3400 kilometers away. At 45 meters per pixel, it was the highest resolution view ever seen of a comet up until that time.

Discovery

The comet was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly during a routine search for comets at Marseille, France on December 28, 1904.

Exploration

Deep Space 1 flyby

On September 21, 2001 the spacecraft Deep Space 1, 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 Earth what were, at the time, the best images and other science data from a comet.