After more than 18 years of dedicated service, Ulysses, a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency, has ceased operations on Tuesday.

Ulysses spacecraft was on a special mission of exploring the regions of space above the poles of the sun.

Contact with Ulysses was brought to a standstill shortly after 1 p.m. PDT.

However, according to NASA project manager, Ed Massey, Ulysses would go on orbiting around the Sun indefinitely.

Ulysses was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on October 6, 1990.
 
NASA informed Ulysses completed about three orbits of the sun before reaching a bubble in space made by the solar wind named heliosphere.

Escalating age and other problems like cold, forced officials to cease Ulysses’ further operations.

Ulysses, which was designed to study solar radiation, traveled 5.5 billion miles in 18 years.

It is worth mentioning here that Ulysses was designed to remain in the space for just five years.