A space anniversary came and went last week, overshadowed by NASA’s announcement that its Stardust mission found yet another mystery surrounding the formation of comets and our Solar System billions of years ago.

The March 13 announcement - which found that Stardust’s target comet Wild-2 (“Vilt-2”) unexpectedly contained bits of minerals formed at high temperatures in comet originating at the frigid fringe of our planetary neighborhood – came 20 years to the day that Europe’s Giotto probe made its historic pass by what may be one of the most famous icy wanderers: Halley’s Comet.

Now plucky Giotto, with its 10 instruments built for the European Space Agency, was not the only spacecraft to visit Halley, a periodic comet that swings around the Sun every 76 years or so. No less than five spacecraft took advantage of Halley’s visit, among them: Russia’s Vega 1 (March 6 rendezvous) and Vega 2 (March 9), Japan’s Suisei (March 8 ) and Sakigake (March 11), and Giotto.

But it was Giotto’s flight that stole the closest glimpses of Halley from about 370 miles (596 kilometers) or so.

Comet Halley – or 1P/Halley if you prefer – has a special place in my heart largely because it prompted my initial interest in space, led to my first telescope, a minor in Astronomy and eventually a job writing about spaceships.

We know so much more about comets now than in 1986 thanks to remote observations, the smashing success of Deep Impact and, of course, the millions of tiny fragments of Wild 2 that researchers are still pulling from Stardust’s aerogel prison. We also know how they sometimes break up and slam into planets, like Shoemaker-Levy 9’s ill-fated date with Jupiter in 1994. And we can only learn more.

The ESA’s Rosetta mission is set to visit the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 and drop the Philae lander toward to its surface, and NASA still has two spacecraft – Deep Impact’s Flyby and Stardust’s parent craft – that may still be capable of future rendezvous. After all, even after Giotto’s date with Comet Halley – which left the probe damaged from debris – it managed to encounter Comet Grigg-Skellerup in 1992.

Let’s just hope that we’ll be as fortunate when Comet Halley comes round again in 2062.