81P/Wild 2 Information Page

Comet 81P Wild 2, is a periodic comet named after Swiss astronomer Paul Wild, who discovered it on January 6, 1978, using a 40-cm Schmidt telescope at Zimmerwald, Switzerland, In September 1974, it passed within one million kilometers of the planet Jupiter, the strong gravitational pull of which perturbed the comet's orbit and brought it into the inner Solar System. Its orbital period changed from 43 years to about 6 years, and its perihelion is now about 1.59 astronomical unit (AU). It has dimensions 1.65 x 2 x 2.75 km, and an orbit semi-major axis distance of 3.45 AU with an eccentricity of 0.5384. In 2004 the Stardust spacecraft flew by comet Wild 2 at a distance of 236 km in order to gather dust particles from near the nucleus — the... ...Show More

urn:nasa:pds:context:target:comet.81p_wild_2

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