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yeah the sun is the source of

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life-sustaining energy here on earth

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much of how it works and affects us

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remains a source of scientific mystery

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sunspots were first recorded by humans

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in the 1600s

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astrophysicists have since linked

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heightened sunspot activity with the

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solar wind

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it's a million mile an hour force of

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magnetically charged particles emanating

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from the sun's upper atmosphere ebbing

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and flowing in minimum and maximum

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intensities over 11-year cycles the

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so-called space weather can seriously

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affect how things work here on earth

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such as disrupting satellite

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communications telephone service and

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personal electronics it would help

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our technology

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to safeguard the technology by knowing

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when and in what intensity space weather

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occurs and where these effects might

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show up to two

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one

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ignition and liftoff of discovery and

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the ulysses spacecraft bound for the

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polar regions of the sun until the

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launch of ulysses from space shuttle

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discovery in 1990

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data for understanding and predicting

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space weather had come from a limited

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sampling area the plane extending from

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the sun's equator

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ulysses has since made three orbits

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above and below the poles of the sun

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vastly expanding the territory from

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where raw space weather data are

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gathered so ulysses was really the first

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spacecraft that

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leaped out of this confinement

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and

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gives us a view of the global

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heliosphere ulysses has found that the

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solar minimum we're in right now is

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producing the lowest levels of solar

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wind seen since accurate readings became

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available a half century ago

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but for heliophysicists these data raise

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as many questions as they answer the

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space age is only 50 years now

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and

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the sun just operates on longer time

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scales than these 50 years so we might

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have glimpsed just the surface of what

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is really going on by expanding its

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reach both in time and space

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ulysses is helping the discipline of

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space weather prediction grow beyond its

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infancy for the betterment of life here

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on earth

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for more about ulysses the heliosphere