Over the poles of the Sun
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Ulysses Operations |
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he Ulysses Mission is a joint undertaking between the European Space Agency
(ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Its goal
is the exploration of the Sun's environment far out of the ecliptic plane.
Ulysses is the only spacecraft to have visited this unique region over the
northern and southern poles of the Sun.
aunched on 6th October
1990, Ulysses has completed almost 17.5 years of continuous operations. The
spacecraft is currently coming to the end of its third pass through the
northern polar region of the Sun.
nfortunately, the end of
the mission is now imminent due to dwindling electrical power on-board the
spacecraft, especially to power the internal heaters required to prevent the
attitude control fuel from freezing.
Once this fuel freezes, the spacecraft can
longer be manoeuvred to keep it pointing at the Earth to maintain its data
downlink.
This situation is made worse by the failure of the last remaining working
X-band travelling wave tube amplifier (TWTA) on
evertheless, the Ulysses flight
control team still have 
ou are viewing the web page of the Ulysses Mission Operations Team which is
based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Its primary purpose is
to provide the Ulysses science community with information about past, present
and future operations of the spacecraft.
ur site is divided into the following sections:
