What is your opinion about this?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/23aug_mariner4.htm

I suggest also reading this

http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/~pbrown/satimp-1999.pdf

An interesting theory. Maybe they can track down the debris from that comet.

The first spacecraft to explore out in that direction was Mars-1, in 1962. Nazarova reported that increases in micrometeorite activity were correlated with comet orbits.

In fact, Mars 1 was launched near the maximum of the Taurid meteor stream (which is due to debris of comet Encke) and it recorded many meteoroid impacts during the very first days of its flight.

There's already been a discussion on this: Minor Mariner 4 mystery.

If this link can be firmly established, Mariner-4 has given us a great freebie! Sort of like Helios 2 (might have been 1, I need to check) and Comet West.

According to the Lavochkin web site http://www.laspace.ru/rus/vega5.php the two Vega probes encountered several meteor streams during their extended mission. The site mentions the streams associated with comets 72P/Denning-Fujikawa, long lost periodic comets 3D/Biela and D/1819 W1 Blanpain and Halley itself.
Helios 1 made observations of the dust and ion tails of the great comet C/1975 V1 West as it receded from the Sun in 1976 and of comet C/1978 H1 Meier in November 1978.

Click to view attachment

And Vega got pelted hard when it passed through Halley's tail. It had some external shields, which you can see in the photo above. The solar panels were particularly damaged and produced much less power after that.

To add to the list Ulysses has had a few such encounters, as did Pioneer-6 with Comet Kohoutek.

And Pioneer 7 passed 12 million kilometers from comet Halley