Ulysses
An artist's conception of Ulysses at its Jupiter encounter. (Credit: ESA)
Lifetime: October 1990 - June 2009 (end of communication)
Operators: NASA and ESA
Primary Science
The Ulysses spacecraft was launched, via a gravitational slingshot around Jupiter, to pass through the south solar plane to allow study of the sun's environment as a function of solar latitude. These studies included the properties of the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic field, of galactic cosmic rays and neutral interstellar gas, and to study energetic particle composition and acceleration.