Space Exploration Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for spacecraft operators, scientists, engineers, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Wikipedia and this answer explain that it will take several flyby's of Venus for ESA's Solar Orbiter to reach 34° of inclination.
Question: Currently, what's the highest heliocentric inclination achieved by a deep space probe, without using the outer planets (i.e. Jupiter and beyond)? Will Solar orbiter set a new record?
Note that by using Jupiter Ulysses achieved a heliocentric inclination of over 79°!
Some candidates:
The Deep Impact spacecraft's impactor, matching Tempel 1's inclination of 10.47 degrees upon collision.
The Dawn spacecraft, matching Ceres' inclination of 10.59 degrees.
The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft, matching 433 Eros' inclination of 10.83 degrees upon landing.
Solar Orbiter is currently beating all of them, at ~14 degrees.
