SPACE ART: Ulysses Leaves Earth

(Above) This painting is an artist’s impression of the Ulysses spacecraft mated with its solid rocket booster drifting away from the Space Shuttle Discovery. The booster was used to push Ulysses out of Earth orbit towards Jupiter. Ulysses used Jupiter’s gravity to hurl it into an orbit that takes it over the Sun’s polar regions, an area not visible to Earth-based observers.