High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Giotto was a European robotic spacecraft mission from the European Space Agency, intended to fly by and study Halley`s Comet. On 13 March 1986, the mission succeeded in approaching Halley`s nucleus at a distance of 596 kilometers. The spacecraft was named after the Early Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone. He had observed Halley`s Comet in 1301 and was inspired to depict it as the star of Bethlehem in his painting Adoration of the Magi.