ESA Science & Technology - The Ulysses Mission

Publication date: 01 January 1998

Authors: Smith, E.J., Marsden, R.G.

Journal: Scientific American
Volume: 278
Issue: 1
Page: pp. 52-57
Year: 1998

For much of the past four decades, the scientific probes sent into space stayed relatively close to the equatorial plane of the Sun, which contains the orbits of Earth and other planets. But a few years ago a single craft, Ulysses, ventured out of that thin zone and into the 'polar regions' of interplanetary space.