LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ulysses: Sun
built 655 days ago
Ulysses is the first mission to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the Sun. Its data have given scientists their first look at the variable effect that the Sun has on the space around it.
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Ulysses is a solar probe launched in 1990 that has made the first-ever measurements of the Sun from a polar orbit. In route to solar polar orbit, it made a close flyby of Jupiter and made measurements of the solar system's largest planet.
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The first high latitude solar pass began when Ulysses reached 70 degrees south solar latitude in June l994. Ulysses has spent about four months above that latitude, about 2.2 astronomical units from the sun. (An astronomical unit is about l50 million kilometers or 93 million miles, the average distance between the sun and the Earth.) Ulysses will cross the sun's equator in February l995 and then continue toward the north pole. During its second polar passage, beginning in June 1995, Ulysses has spent four months at latitudes greater than 70 degrees. The primary mission was completed in October 1995. Currently Ulysses is beginning continuing on it's eliptical orbit towards another intercept of the ecliptic at about 5.4 AU in early 1998.
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After launch, Ulysses headed out to Jupiter, arriving in February 1992 for the gravity-assist manoeuvre that swung the craft into its unique solar orbit. It passed over the Sun’s south pole in 1994, and the north pole in 1995. Beginning its second orbit of the Sun, Ulysses revisited the south pole in 2000 and the north a year later. At that time, the Sun was close to the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity. Ulysses then headed back out to the orbit of Jupiter on the long leg of its six-year circuit around the Sun.
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