Ulysses was a robotic space probe designed to study the Sun. The spacecraft, named for the Latin translation of "Odysseus" after Dante's Inferno, was launched October 6, 1990 from the Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-41) as a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. It was originally scheduled for launch in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. The spacecraft's mission was to study the Sun at all latitudes, equipped with instr...
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Ulysses was a robotic space probe designed to study the Sun. The spacecraft, named for the Latin translation of "Odysseus" after Dante's Inferno, was launched October 6, 1990 from the Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-41) as a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. It was originally scheduled for launch in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. The spacecraft's mission was to study the Sun at all latitudes, equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).
By February 2008, the power output from the RTG, which is generated by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, had decreased enough to leave insufficient power for internal heaters to keep the spacecraft's attitude control hydrazine fuel from freezing. The end of mission was at one point scheduled for July 1, 2008, but mission scientists came up with a method to keep the fuel liquid by conducting a short thruster burn...
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