What is the closest distance that the Ulysses spacecraft has come to the sun?

Question

in miles or meters

Answer 1

93 million miles: it was launched out toward Jupiter and hasn't gotten very close to the sun.

It was launched toward Jupiter, yes it was meant to study the sun, but it was launched out into deep space so it could study the sun without being affected by anything else. It was also launched toward Jupiter to use a gravitational assist to push it out of the solar elliptical plane so that it could look down on the sun.

It takes a lot of energy to launch a space probe. Going to Mars isn’t that difficult, and falling into the solar system is easy, but trying to go out to Jupiter and beyond is difficult. That’s why all the outer space probes have had to use gravity assist. A special orbit around an object will bleed some of the orbital speed of the object into that item which is orbiting it. We slung the Voyager probes around Earth, the Sun, and Venus so we could get it out to Jupiter and beyond.

The same had to be done with the Ulysses probe. We needed the huge mass of Jupiter to give it enough speed to break the orbital plane of the rest of the solar system. The closest it has gotten to the sun is 1.3 Astronomical Units (AU).

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_%28spacecraft%29
“The spacecraft is designed to withstand both the heat of the inner solar system and the cold at Jupiter distance. Extensive blanketing and electric heaters protect against cold. Heating is minimized by the 1.3 AU perihelion, meaning that Ulysses always studies the sun from a greater distance than the Earth.”

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion
“The point of closest approach is called the periapsis or pericentre”

This means the closest point of an orbit is the perihelion.

Answer 2

its meters foo