Collisions between the nucleus of Comet Halley and dust from its own meteoroid stream

As Comet Halley orbits the Sun it continuously ploughs through its own meteoroid stream. We show that the collision velocity between the stream meteoroids and the surface of the cometary nucleus is far from negligible, the mean value being about 4.0 km s–1. Half of the collisions occur when the comet is close to perihelion. The total amount of its own dust hit by Comet Halley per orbit is around 17 g, and this damages a mere 8 × 10–8 per cent of the surface of the nucleus.