# Ulysses

*Spacecraft*

Went to Jupiter in order to leave the plane of the planets: the flyby threw it into an orbit over the Sun's poles, the only spacecraft ever to fly there. It found the solar wind blowing fast and steady from the poles and slow and gusty from the equator, over most of a solar cycle, and was switched off in 2009 when its fuel lines began to freeze.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Agency | ESA/NASA |
| Launched | 1990-10-06 - 2009-06-30 |
| From the Sun | 232,130,301 km (+657,924 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 149,808,652 km (+1,848,331 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 8 min |
| Travelling at | 29.7 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Path

A loop round the Sun almost perpendicular to the plane of the planets, 1.3 to 5.4 AU and six years round. Jupiter threw it there in 1992, and nothing has flown over the Sun's poles since.

## Along the way

- 1992-02-08 — Jupiter flyby, thrown out of the plane of the planets
- 1994-09-13 — First pass over the Sun's south pole
- 1995-07-31 — First pass over the Sun's north pole
- 2009-06-30 — Switched off, with the fuel lines beginning to freeze

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=ulysses
- The mission's own page: https://sci.esa.int/web/ulysses
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/ulysses/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt