Talk:Halley Armada

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Naming

Re:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Space/Archive_2#Halley_Armada

It is certainly the common name (WP:UCN) of the endeavour, as far as I know all the parties involved have since called it that. ISAS, suisei, "The fleet of six Halley's comet explorers was called the Halley Armada". ESA, ESAbulletin125 (.pdf - 1.35MB) "The Halley Armada". Even NASA, whyweexplore, "The Halley Armada consisted of two Russian spacecraft (Vega 1 and 2), two Japanese spacecraft (Sagigake and Suisei), and the European Space Agency's Giotto." etc. It was called such at the time too, Time magazine, paper from the same year, so referring to the event as the Halley Armada in its article is entirely correct.

As for distinction between official/unofficial and whether it was a concerted effort....As the article also points out, though it could do with more words on that and many other areas, the armada was sent due to it being one of Halley's rare but clockwork apparitions (when it's relatively close-by) which was the reason for the international interest. It certainly wasn't a coincidence an armada of spacecraft was sent!

Each individual spacecraft was technically a separate programme (this is the norm in international cooperation in space, see ISS) but they would perform different tasks and the information they gathered would be used by others, particularly Giotto in its close approach of the nucleus, ESA Giotto. In fact on the ISAS history section, ISAS history "The occasion of the Halley mission led to the establishment of the IACG (Inter-Agency Consultative Group), which is still extremely effective in functioning as a cooperative organization among Japan, the US, Europe, and Russia.". So you could call it a proto-collaboration.

Tbh although the article could be greatly improved, I don't think it is currently implying anything wrong. Something like "The Halley Armada is the common name of a group of space probes...." would be fine. (sorry it's not a very creative example but you get what I mean) ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)