Ulysses launch

In 1984, the AMPTE mission launched the first carbon-foil TOF-MS into space, which would have been the second, had the Challenger shuttle disaster not delayed the Ulysses launch until 1991 (Fig. 11.2) [23]. The photons were filtered out by a traditional blackened deflection system, which directed the ions toward the 2 p,g/cm2 thick foil mounted on an 85% transparent grid almost a square centimeter in area. The grid provided the support needed to survive the launch. The foil thickness permitted >2keV/nuc ions to pass through and hit a SSD some 10 cm away. To ensure that the ions made it through the foil and also through the dead layer on the SSD (caused by the upper electrode), the foil and the entire TOF section were floated at 20 kV to post-accelerate the ions. Electrons sputtered off the carbon foil became the start, whereas electrons sputtered off the SSD became the stop pulse for the TOF. 

The fifth spacecraft to travel past Jupiter was Ulysses, launched on October 6, 1990. Ulysses s primary goal was a study of the Sun, but in order to obtain the momentum it needed to attain solar orbit, it was launched toward Jupiter first. As the probe orbited the planet, it picked up additional energy in a slingshot-like effect that had been used with other spacecraft, sending the probe back toward the Sun, where it attained orbit in June 1994. Ulysses passed around Jupiter on February 8, 1992, when it collected additional data on the planet s magnetic field and the dust particles in its atmosphere that had been detected by earlier spacecraft. 

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