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Ulysses makes a return trip.


Just as the sun is reaching the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses Ulysses: see Odysseus. spacecraft has begun its second pass over the sun's poles. Six years ago, when Ulysses completed its first polar swoop, the sun was at the minimum of its cycle and relatively quiescent.

Back then, Ulysses' measurements revealed that the solar wind--the stream of charged particles flowing out of the sun--was blowing at a rapid, steady rate of 750 kilometers per second at the poles. Today the solar wind solar wind, stream of ionized hydrogen—protons and electrons—with an 8% component of helium ions and trace amounts of heavier ions that radiates outward from the sun at high speeds. The continuous expansion of the solar corona into the surrounding vacuum of space carries away from the sun about 1 million tons of gas per sec; this blows out like a wind through the solar system. at the same high latitudes is more chaotic and blustery.

Ulysses crossed the solar latitude of 70 [degrees] S on Sept. 8 and will spend the next 4 months flying over the sun's south polar region. Then, after swinging back over the sun's equator, the craft will begin passing over the sun's northern polar area on Sept. 3, 2001. Ulysses is scheduled to complete its second and final trip around the sun in 2004.

"By the time the mission comes to an end, Ulysses will have gathered the only set of observations above the solar poles covering more than a complete 11-year solar cycle," says Ulysses scientist Andre Balogh of the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London.
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Article Details
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Author:R.C.
Publication:Science News
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:4EUUK
Date:Sep 23, 2000
Words:207
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