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| Ulysses encounters massive coronal ejection from the Sun |
| On 10 May, most of the instruments on board Ulysses recorded their highest readings during the ten and a half years that the spacecraft has been in orbit. The cause was a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) which had left the Sun three days previously, heading towards the position in space that Ulysses was occupying at the time. |
| Date: 19 Jun 2001 |
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| ESA's solar system missions to get star billing in Nice |
| Geophysicists attending next week's General Assembly of
the European Geophysical Society in Nice won't just be discussing the latest scientific research about the Earth. They will also be turning their attention to other bodies within our solar system and the missions Europe is sending to explore them. |
| Date: 20 Mar 2001 |
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| Ulysses witnesses the Sun's magnetic struggle |
| During solar maximum, when the Sun's activity is at a peak in its 11 year cycle, the polarity of its
magnetic field changes: the north pole takes on the polarity of the south pole and vice versa. Now,
for the first time ever, a spacecraft has witnessed this process from a front-row seat high above the
Sun's south pole. |
| Date: 26 Jan 2001 |
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| Ulysses principal investigator honoured |
| Eberhard T. Gr|n, principal investigator for the Ulysses DUST experiment, has been elected
a fellow of the American Geophysical Union for his work with dust detectors on several interplanetary
missions. Using results gathered by the Ulysses DUST detector, Gr|n and his colleagues at the
Max-Planck-Institut f|r Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany, were the first to identify interstellar
dust deep within the solar system. |
| Date: 14 Dec 2000 |
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| Ulysses kept on track during short leg of solar cruise |
| Special operations began on Friday 1 December to keep Ulysses communicating with Earth over the next year when the spacecraft is closest to the Sun during the short leg of its orbit. |
| Date: 07 Dec 2000 |
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| Ulysses is now over the Sun's south pole |
| Today (27 November), Ulysses becomes the first space probe to fly over the south pole of
the Sun twice. The European spacecraft has reached a maximum latitude of 80.1 degrees south.
The international teams of scientists working with the mission are raising their glasses to toast
the intrepid solar explorer only weeks after celebrating the 10th anniversary of its launch. |
| Date: 27 Nov 2000 |
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| Fly me to the Sun! |
| ESA inaugurates the European Project on the Sun
On 8/9 November, at Noordwijk in the Netherlands, the European Space Agency (ESA) will inaugurate
the "European Project on the Sun" (EPOS), a travelling exhibition conceived and built by European
youngsters who have spent the past eight months acting as solar scientists and
communication experts working on various themes relating to the Sun. |
| Date: 03 Nov 2000 |
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| Yet another record: Ulysses detects most distant gamma-ray burst |
| Ulysses has helped to set another record. On 31 January this year, the intrepid spacecraft detected the most distant gamma-ray burst ever recorded.
Other spacecraft also picked up the burst, enabling astronomers to estimate its position in the sky using triangulation methods. A message was sent to ground-based telescopes and shortly afterwards the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile identified the optical counterpart - a rapidly-fading source of visible light in the southern constellation of Carina. |
| Date: 19 Oct 2000 |
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| Meeting concludes on launch anniversary |
| On 6 October 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft was launched. Today, ten years later,
the international band of scientists attending the 34th ESLAB symposium are
concluding proceedings with their sense of excitement and eager anticipation
undimmed. The meeting has heard of numerous observations, made over recent
months, that are leading to new insights about the behaviour of the Sun and the
heliosphere at solar maximum. Many speakers have looked forward to further
observations over the next four years as the solar cycle returns to minimum. |
| Date: 06 Oct 2000 |
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| Third day brings bonanza of new results |
| Many new and tantalising results were discussed yesterday, during the third day of the
34th ESLAB symposium on the 3D heliosphere at solar maximum. Here is a selection:
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| Date: 05 Oct 2000 |
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| Ulysses encounters a different solar wind |
| Its really exciting how different the solar wind is this time compared with the first orbit,
David McComas from the Los Alamos National Laboratory told the 34th ESLAB symposium
on the heliosphere yesterday morning. His observation was repeated by many of the speakers:
however you look at the solar wind or corona, theres evidence of far more solar activity now
than during Ulysses first south polar passage in 1994. |
| Date: 05 Oct 2000 |
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| Ulysses 10th anniversary meeting gets off to maximum start |
| If the Voyager spacecraft are ever to cross the heliospheres boundary, they will probably do so within the next year or two before the effects of this years solar maximum cause the heliosphere to expand. Ed Stone from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, told an international gathering of solar scientists yesterday afternoon, that the two spacecraft are now probably closer to the boundary, which estimates put at 80-115 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun, than the 16 AU distance between them. |
| Date: 04 Oct 2000 |
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| Solar scientists converge as solar activity peaks |
| As the Ulysses spacecraft hurtles through space towards the Suns south pole, more than
100 scientists from 16 countries will be speeding their way through airspace next week
towards ESTEC, ESAs technical centre near Amsterdam. They will converge to discuss the
very latest results from the intrepid spacecraft. |
| Date: 29 Sep 2000 |
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| Ulysses returns to the Sun's south pole and encounters blustery solar weather |
| ESA Press Release N0 55-2000.
Just as solar storms are brewing, the European-built space probe, Ulysses, is venturing over the
Sun's south pole for the second time in its 10-year life. The intrepid spacecraft will pass 70 degrees south
on 8 September, shortly before the Sun's 11-year activity cycle is due to peak. Solar storms are
already numerous and the high latitude solar windwind (the stream of charged particles blowing
away from the Sun) is chaotic and blustery. |
| Date: 06 Sep 2000 |
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| ESA approves funding to extend Ulysses |
| The European Space Agency has agreed to fund the Ulysses mission
for an extra 2 years 9 months. At its meeting in Paris on 5-6 June, ESA's Science Programme Committee approved the funds to continue operating the spacecraft from the end of 2001 to 30 September 2004.
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| Date: 14 Jun 2000 |
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| ESA approves funding to extend Ulysses |
| The European Space Agency has agreed to fund the Ulysses mission for an extra 2 years and 9 months. At its meeting in Paris on 5-6 June, ESA's Science Programme Committee approved the funds to continue operating the spacecraft from the end of 2001 to 30 September 2004. |
| Date: 13 Jun 2000 |
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| PR 24-2000: Ulysses Feels the Brush of a Comet's Tail |
| Ulysses, the joint ESA/NASA spacecraft, has added comet spotter to its list of talents. Two
papers published in Nature today report that on 1 May 1996, the spacecraft flew through the tail of comet
Hyakutake whose nucleus was more than 3.5AU (one AU equals the Sun-Earth distance) away at the time
"This makes it the longest comet tail ever recorded", says Geraint Jones from Imperial College, London who
is a member of one of the two instrument teams that made the discovery. |
| Date: 06 Apr 2000 |
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| Ulysses gets ready for new solar polar adventure |
| Ulysses, the joint ESA/NASA spacecraft to explore the region of space above the Sun's poles, is poised on the edge of new discoveries as it prepares to pass over the poles of the Sun for the second time in its ten year lifetime. The first passage occurred at solar minimum, a time of low solar activity. But the second will occur at solar maximum when the Sun is at its most turbulent. New findings are expected about the effects of this turbulence on the heliosphere, the vast volume of space that engulfs all the planets and over which the Sun exerts its influence. |
| Date: 07 Feb 2000 |
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| INFO 21-1999: Sunlight keeps star dust at bay |
| The force of sunlight is keeping part of our solar system dust free - at least free from a particular type of dust. Markus Landgraf, now working at ESA's operations centre ESOC in Germany and his international team of colleagues, made this discovery after poring over data collected by the dust detector on board the Ulysses spacecraft. In a paper published in Science today, they show how their findings lend support to the view that our solar system is moving through a cloud of dust and gas that is made of the same stuff as interstellar clouds observed elsewhere in our galaxy. |
| Date: 17 Dec 1999 |
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| G-modes detected in interplanetary magnetic field? |
| New evidence that gravity waves originating in the Suns core may leave their imprint in the solar wind was presented to last months meeting of the Ulysses science working team. |
| Date: 26 Nov 1999 |
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