The Ulysses Mission

527 Words2 Pages

The Ulysses spacecraft was first and only spacecraft designed and lunched to study the Sun from outside the lower solar latitudes. All other space craft that studied the Sun stayed along the same elliptical plane that the Earth is on. The spacecraft was part of a joint venture between NASA and the ESA. Originally planed as a two spacecraft mission called the International Solar Polar Mission, it was scaled down to one probe due to NASA cutbacks in funding. This resulted in the ESA designing the spacecraft and NASA lunching it from Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990.

The Spacecraft then flew to Jupiter in two years. It used Jupiter’s gravity to increase its speed and alter its orbit downward and away from ecliptic plane. By the end of 1994 it entered the southern solar polar region and moved to the northern solar polar region. After leaving the northern region it came across two comets while it was circling around for its next visit to the Sun. Five years after it left the northern solar polar region it came back to explore the southern pole again. Ulysses also came to its ...

More about The Ulysses Mission

Open Document