The power of Wetherill's friend, Jupiter

Abstract

Jupiter is a gigantic gravitational sling that can alter the orbits of small bodies while triggering their "chaotic" diffusion. This property was used to fly the spacecraft Ulysses around the solar poles. Ulysses was not fired directly to the Sun but to Jupiter, which did sling it back to the Sun, thus saving the spacecraft a lot of energy. © Springer 2006.