81P/Wild Comet 81P/Wild, also known as Wild 2, is a comet named after Swiss astronomer Paul Wild (pronounced Vilt), who discovered it in 1978.It is believed that for most of its 4.5 billion-year lifetime, Wild 2 had a more distant and circular orbit. In September 1974, it passed within less than one million kilometers of the planet Jupiter, whose strong gravitational pull perturbed the comet's orbit and brought it into the inner solar system. Its orbital period changed from 43 years to about 6 years,