Bristol were successful in their proposal to base the forthcoming GIOTTO probe, which was intended to intercept the comet Halley, on the proven design of their earlier GEOS satellites. They were able to demonstrate that, despite the use of a spin-stabilised design concept, it would be possible to point a high-gain antenna very accurately at the Earth from a very great distance in this, the very first European deep-space mission. The dish of the high-gain antenna was "despun" by a servo-mechanism so that it always pointed Earthwards.

GIOTTO was launched from an Ariane 5 rocket in July 1985, and Halleys Comet was intercepted on 13th March 1986, watched live on television by a huge, thrilled audience. The mission produced the first colour photographs of the nucleus of a comet, and also gained data on the composition of the comet and its tail. Although the space vehicle had a thick dust shield, GIOTTO was hit by a large dust particle, which knocked the craft slightly off-course, and damaged some of the systems. The mission was deemed to be a great success however, and was in such good condition after the encounter that the craft went on to intercept another comet, Grigg-Skjellerup, on 10th July 1992.

The collection has on display a mock-up of the spacecraft, used during the development of the mission. The real GIOTTO is still cruising around the solar system, the last time it came close to Earth was in 1999.

The Skylark, a solid propellant 3-stage sounding rocket, was first launched in 1957, a provided a relatively cheap way of performing scientific experiments in space. There have been many variants, with motor and payload diameters ranging from 10 inches to 36 inches, with the most common having a 17 inch diameter.

The scientific missions have included astronomy, astro-physics, micro-gravity and earth sciences research. Overseas customers included NASA, DLR (Germany), SSC (Sweden), and the European Space Agency, but the majority of flights in earlier years were sponsored by the UK Science Research Council, launched from Woomera in Australia. The last Skylark mission was conducted in Sweden in May 2005, and was the 441st Skylark launch.

The Skylark could lift its payload to an altitude of up to 1000 km, depending on the variant. At this level the residual air drag is so low that the payload experiences several minutes of 'micro-gravity'. The equipment then falls to Earth by parachute, and is recovered for analysis.

The payloads were heavy so that they could survive accelerations at lift-off in the region of 30 g, and the extremely high levels of vibration generated by the rocket motors and atmospheric turbulence. When the Skylark was launched, the shock produced by the ignition of the high thrust motor shook the ground even a kilometre away. The vehicle disappeared out of sight, straight up, in a blink of an eye - it was the ultimate dragster.

The exhibit includes the Goldfinch first stage motor and fins recovered after a 500 km mission in Sweden, and all stages of a new Skylark 12, including the main Raven sustainer motor and a payload module. At 9.25 metres in length, the hangar ceiling is not high enough to demonstrate a Skylark in its launch position.

In 1956, the Bristol Aeroplane Company set up a rocket manufacturing facility at its wartime shadow factory at Banwell, west of Bristol. Three years later this became a joint venture with Aerojet General of the USA, and was the main source of rocket motors in Britain until 1991.

The Collection has on display two of the British Aerojet-built final stage rocket motors of the all-British Black Arrow vehicle, which launched the X3 communications satellite into orbit from the Woomera range in Australia in 1971.

ENVISAT is a European Space Agency satellite, designed to monitor the Earths atmosphere, oceans and land, to analyse environmental and climatic changes. Launched on 28th February 2002, the satellite circles the Earth in a sun-synchronous polar abort, at about 800 km.

The Bristol Aero Collection has a full-size model of ENVISAT, but due to its immense size, it is not currently on display.