Archiv: Ulysses (spacecraft)


13.02.2026 - 06:02 [ Telegraph.co.uk ]

Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking

(October 18, 2008)

The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.

Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.

Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.

13.02.2026 - 05:54 [ European Space Agency, ESA / Youtube ]

The Ulysses Legacy: Observing the Sun for 17 years

Sep 3, 2008
The ESA/NASA Ulysses mission has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Sun and our local interstellar neighbourhood. Ulysses was designed to last for five years but the mission was extended four times, allowing Ulysses to pass over the Sun‘s poles for a second and third time, and spending more than 18 years in space.

24.04.2023 - 10:51 [ Telegraph.co.uk ]

Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking

(18.10.2008)

New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago. (…)

„Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment.“

The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.

29.09.2018 - 15:36 [ Telegraph.co.uk ]

Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking

(18.10.2008) The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, Nasa scientists have warned.