The ulysses space mission

Abstract

We describe briefly the collaborative ESA-NASA Ulysses mission which will provide, for the first time in the history of the Solar-System exploration,in situ observations of the heliosphere over a broad range of heliographic latitudes. Launched on October 6, 1990, Ulysses has been injected in a high-inclination orbit by means of a gravity-assisted manoeuvre at the time of his encounter with Jupiter, in February 1992. On-board instrumentation will obtain data on the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field, radio, X-and γ-bursts plasma waves and interplanetary and interstellar gas and dust. Italy participates to the mission with an experiment, led by Professor Bruno Bertotti, of the University of Pavia, aimed at detecting gravitational waves, and with an interdisciplinary investigation, led by Professor Giancarlo Noci, of the University of Florence, where scientists from the University of Florence, the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, the Institute for the Physics of the Interplanetary Space of Frascati and the Observatory of Trieste will use data from different experiments to study the dependence of mass loss, ion composition and turbulence of the solar wind on heliographic latitude.