The 5006744 Ulysses Space Probe is a 236 piece Creator Expert VIP release that was offered exclusive to VIP members on the LEGO.com VIP rewards website on April 14th 2021 at exactly 9AM. The promotion quickly sold out within fifteen minutes and the LEGO.com website experienced issues due to the massive number of members trying to obtain the set. It also had various other version numbers such as 6373604-1 (European) and 6373603-1 (North American).
The joint ESA-NASA deep-space mission Ulysses was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 6, 1990.
Built in Germany, Ulysses was designed to study the heliosphere—the region of space influenced by the Sun and its magnetic field. Its primary goal was to make the first-ever measurements of the unexplored region of space above the Sun's poles. For this reason, it operated in an elliptical heliocentric orbit that took it high above the ecliptic plane, where each orbit lasted 6.2 years.
To get into this special orbit, the 809lb (367kg) Ulysses had to be helped by a stack of solid rocket motors. These were loaded into the shuttle payload bay along with the main spacecraft. They were ignited once released from Discovery.
With nine sets of instruments, the areas of investigation included looking into the properties and behavior of the solar wind, measuring the Sun's magnetic field, detecting galactic cosmic rays, and investigating how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.
On June 30, 2009, the Ulysses mission ended after 6,842 days (18 years, 8 months, 24 days) in orbit.
