Giotto is a European robotic spacecraft mission from the European Space Agency. The spacecraft flew by and studied Halley's Comet and in doing so became the first spacecraft to make close up observations of a comet. On 13 March 1986, the spacecraft succeeded in approaching Halley's nucleus at a distance of 596 kilometers. It 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 in the Scrovegni Chapel. Members of the ESA’s Solar System Working Group started investigating a mission to Halley’s comet in 1977 before rejecting it in August 1978 in favour of a lunar orbiter.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_(spacecraft). Related NASA reference: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/giotto/. Description adapted from Wikipedia contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).