Browsing: Ulysses Solar Probe

Ulysses was a joint NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) solar probe, launched in 1990, designed to study the Sun’s environment from a unique high-latitude perspective. Unlike most solar missions that orbit near the Sun’s equatorial plane, Ulysses was sent on a trajectory that allowed it to observe the Sun’s poles, providing unprecedented data on the solar wind, magnetic fields, and cosmic rays in the heliosphere. It achieved this by first traveling to Jupiter, where a gravity assist propelled it into a wide orbit over the Sun’s poles. Ulysses revolutionized our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field and solar wind, particularly during the solar cycle. The mission concluded in 2009 after nearly 19 years of groundbreaking observations.