Vega program

The Vega program (Russian: Вега) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union, who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus, where each would release a lander and a balloon probe, and later conduct a flyby of Halley's Comet. The flyby of Halley's Comet had been a late mission change in the Venera program, following on from the cancellation of the American Halley mission in 1981. A later Venera mission was canceled and the Venus part of the Vega 1 mission was reduced. Because of this, the craft was designated VeGa, a contraction of Venera and Gallei (Венера and Галлей respectively, the Russian words for "Venus" and "Halley"). The spacecraft design was based on the previous Venera 9 and Venera 10 missions. The two spacecraft were launched on 15 and 21 December 1984, respectively. With their redesignated dual missions, the Vega probes became part of the Halley Armada, a group of space probes that studied Halley's Comet during its 1985/1986 perihelion. The balloon probes that both missions released into the Venusian atmosphere were also the first man-made aircraft to fly on a planet other than Earth, albeit unpowered, and until the operation of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter probe in 2021 the only examples of man-made extraterrestrial aircraft in history.