Sixteen years after its launch on Oct. 6, 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft has begun its third solar polar orbit—a journey around the poles of the sun. The mission, a joint NASA-European Space Agency venture, studies how the sun's gaseous outer atmosphere spews into space, creating huge space storms. This violent "space weather," in turn, can affect Earth's electricity, satellite and cell phone communications.
Observations by previous spacecraft viewed the sun from its equator. Ulysses is the first mission to move out of that plane and maneuver into an orbit that allows it to study the sun's poles, a view that gives a more complete perspective of the sun's atmosphere.
Ulysses Starts New Journey Around Sun (Click image to enlarge)
