Number 236 (Story #3), August 7, 1995 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein ULYSSES IS NOW PASSING OVER THE SUN'S NORTH POLAR REGION. Launched in 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft does not take photographs but instead monitors the magnetic fields and the fluxes of cosmic rays and solar wind particles in the greater solar environment. Now that Ulysses has gone over the top its main task has been fulfilled, but scientists are hoping that the mission can be extended at least to the year 2000, when the craft would return to the solar antipodes at a time when the sun would be in the most active phase of its 11-year cycle. (Eos, 25 July 1995.)