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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Ulysses probe
Message-ID: <3412@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 22:32:33 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3412
Posted: Fri Feb 28 22:32:33 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 18:49:36 EST
References: <27219.509662022@csvax.caltech.edu>
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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>>	    Ulysses is a European probe, to  be  launched  from  the  Shuttle,
>>	which will go over one the Sun's poles ...
>>	    Originally there was to have been an American  probe  launched  at
>>	the same time to go over the other solar pole. Funding was cut a few
>>	years ago, making the Europeans rather mad as I recall.

Actually, there is an American instrument on Ulysses, built by JHU/APL
[insert sales pitch for Space Division here]; there were to be European
instruments on the American vehicle.

Between this and the Halley fiasco, I doubt the ESA is going to be
interested in doing much with NASA for a while.

>>     How can it go over one pole but not both?

>    I don't know if there are any plans to  keep  talking  to  Ulysses
>after the first polar flyby. Maybe the geometry will be wrong, or  the
>spacecraft will lose radio lock on Earth  while  flying  'behind'  the
>sun.

I forgot to ask my father about the orbital dynamics, but the statement that
it will cross one pole but not the other indicates to me that it's going to
take a hyperbolic orbit, and thus leave the solar system.  THis is just
aguess on my part, though.

C. Wingate