International Cometary Explorer: mission and targets

Project start

December 22, 1983

Declared end

not declared

The start the archive declares is the start of the project, not the launch, and an end it does not declare does not mean the mission is still running.

None of the targets this mission declares is in Galaxy’s catalogue.

A declared target is what the archive files the mission’s data under, not a record of observation.

The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) became part of the Halley Armada to study comet Halley in 1986. It was first place in the Earth-Sun L1 position under the name of International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3). It was to study the Sun-Earth relationship beyond the Earth's magnetosphere. As the part of the armada, it went through the tail of Halley to collect data. In 2014, a crowdfunding group tried to use it for another comet pass, but it lost contact with the spacecraft.

Quoted in English, as the archive publishes it, read on October 4, 2026.

• 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (comet)

Identifier in the archive, which is its citation: urn:nasa:pds:context:investigation:mission.international_cometary_explorer

NASA Planetary Data System, PDS Registry, investigation context products. Dates and targets read on September 29, 2026; how to cite the archive: https://pds.nasa.gov/datastandards/citing/

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