Five years of Ulysses dust data: 2000-2004

The Ulysses spacecraft has been orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse (i = 79 degrees, perihelion distance 1.3 AU, aphelion distance 5.4 AU) since it encountered Jupiter in 1992. Between January 2000 and December 2004, the spacecraft completed almost an entire revolution about the Sun, passing through perihelion in May 2001 and aphelion in July 2004. In this five-year period the dust detector on board recorded 4415 dust impacts. We publish and analyse the complete data set of both raw and reduced data for particles with masses 10(-16) g <= M <= 10(-7) g. Together with. 1695 dust impacts recorded between launch of Ulysses and the end of 1999 published earlier (Grain, E., Baguhl, M., Divine, N., Fechtig, H., Hamilton, D.P, Harmer, M.S., Kissel, J., Lindblad, B.A., Linkert, D., Linkert, G., Mann, L, McDonnell, J.A.M., Morfill, G.E., Polanskey, C., Riemann, R., Schwehm, G.H., Siddique, N., Staubach, P., Zook, H.A., 1995a. Two years of Ulysses dust data. Planetary Space Sci. 43, 971-999, Paper III; Kruger, H., Grun, E., Landgraf, M., Baguhl, M., Dermott, S.F., Fechtig, H., Gustafson, B.A., Hamilton, D.P., Harmer, M.S., Horanyi, M., Kissel, J., Lindblad, B., Linkert, D., Linkert, G., Mann, L, McDonnell, J.A.M., Morfill, G.E., Polanskey, C., Schwehm, G.H., Srama, R., Zook, H.A., 1995. Three years of Ulysses dust data: 1993 to 1995. Planetary and Space Sci. 47, 363-383, Paper V; Kruger, H., Grun, E., Landgraf, M., Dermott, S.F., Fechtig, H., Gustafson, B.A., Hamilton, D.P., Harmer, M.S., Horanyi, M., Kissel, J., Lindblad, B., Linkert, D., Linkert, G., Mann, I., McDonnell, J.A.M., Morfill, G.E., Polanskey, C., Schwehm, G.H., Srama, R., Zook, H.A., 2001b. Four years of Ulysses dust data: 1996 to 1999. Planetary Space Sci. 49, 1303-1324, Paper VII), a data set of 6110 dust impacts detected with the Ulysses sensor between October 1990 and December 2004 is now available. The impact rate measured between 2000 and 2002 was relatively constant with about 0.3 impacts per day showing a maximum at 1.5 per day around ecliptic plane crossing in early-2001. The impact direction of the majority of impacts between 2000 and 2002 is compatible with particles of interstellar origin, the rest are most likely interplanetary particles. In 2003 and 2004 dust stream particles originating from the jovian system dominated the overall impact rate. Twenty-two individual dust streams were measured between November 2002 and December 2004. The observed impact rates are compared with models for interplanetary and interstellar dust. The dust measurements from the entire mission since Ulysses launch give good agreement with the interplanetary flux model of Staubach, P., Grun, E., Jehn, R., 1997. The meteoroid environment near Earth, Adv. Space Res. 19, 301-308. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.