Halley's Comet orbiter Options

[Tom Womack]

How hard is it (in delta-V terms) to launch a probe into orbit around Halley's Comet?

The orbit is obviously very eccentric; also inclined and retrograde. From the example of Ulysses, a suitable Jupiter flyby can put you into an orbit which is inclined, retrograde, and with aphelion at Jupiter, but I have no idea how hard it is then to raise aphelion and lower perihelion to match the comet.

It sounds the sort of thing that an orbit-designer would have done as an example at some stage, but I can't immediately find it on the Web.

[djellison]

We already designed, built and launched such a mission - it was called CONTOUR. It, sadly, was lost as it fired a motor to leave Earth orbit - but its extended mission was explicitly to do flybys of newly discovered long period comets.

[SFJCody]

We already designed, built and launched such a mission - it was called CONTOUR. It, sadly, was lost as it fired a motor to leave Earth orbit - but its extended mission was explicitly to do flybys of newly discovered long period comets.

Arrgh, I'd forgotten the CONTOUR extended mission plans! Such a big loss. Someone needs to propose a similar mission.