Could a probe use Comet Halley for gravity assist?

Could a probe use Comet Halley for gravity assist? I know the comet is light and doesn't have much gravity, but when it's near Earth it's going very fast so wouldn't that be useful?|||In principle yes. Close to the earth it goes fast, of the order of 40 km/s. So if your probe approaches on the right trajectory it would be a big help.





However.... Halley's comet approaches the Sun only every 75 years. The Earth, Halley *and* the target of the probe must be in just the correct positions to make it worthwhile. Secondly, a comet approaching the Sun is heavily outgassing. That's what creates the tail after all. It is in fact surrounded by a dust cloud, very dangerous for your probe.|||The speed combines with the lightness to create the problem. Because it is so light, the gravity effect would be very minor and so would have moved away from the probe before gravity could accelerate it enough to catch up to the comet (so it would be a small effect for a short time).





In addition the speed of the comet has no impact on the gravity energy that it outputs.





My suggestion involves a lasso made of NASA modified bungee cable and texas billionnaire rancher crazy enough to fund such an crazy project.|||Technically, yes.


But even though halley's velocity is great, to my understanding, the miniscule gravity wont transfer very much of that momentum to the probe.