Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
The device is equipped with over 300,000 data channels that require compression with an on-board supercomputer before the information can be transmitted to Earth.
Space Station to Receive New Anti-Matter Detector Component
http://www.physorg.com/news191580957.html
CERN: a final test for AMS-02 at ESTEC
The AMS-02 will be connected to the International Space Station's S3 truss segment. This piece of equipment contains a large magnet and is built to look for antimatter and to seek out data regarding dark matter.
The Cape Week in Review Shuttle Launch Manifest Changes - NASA Watch
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/06/the-cape-week-i-4.html
AMS NASA Project
NASA astronaut Shannon Walker, Expedition 24/25 flight engineer,
Preflight Interview: Shannon Walker
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition24/walker_interview.html
STS-134. It delivers another External Logistics Carrier and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Shannon, tell me about what those new components are and about how you and your station crewmates are going to be involved with the shuttle crew during the joint operation.
First, how we’re involved, when the shuttle crews come up, they have usually done the detailed training on how they’re going to put new instruments or modules onto the station. So we are usually there as assistants for what they’re doing. The external logistics platform is just that, it is a piece of structure that is attached to the outside of the station where we can put spare hardware that can live outside, so if we have boxes or equipment that reach the end of their life or have problems later on, then we can do spacewalks. We’ve got our spares out there, and we can easily go repair what needs to be repaired. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a very interesting research module, I guess would be a way to describe it, that’s going to be attached to the outside of the station. What this one is doing—I’m very excited about this, this is the physicist in me coming out— is that it will be probing the secrets of the universe, essentially. It is designed to look for things such as antimatter, dark matter, and some very unusual particles called strangelets that are heavy quark particles, and it accomplishes this by detecting cosmic rays, which are not really rays. They’re actually very high energy particles, but that is out there, and so hopefully it will be able to tell us some of the secrets that we’re trying to unlock about the universe.
Is it passive, sitting there waiting for these cosmic rays to hit it?
Essentially yes, so it’s got a very large magnet on there, so it’s waiting for the rays to zoom by and then uses the magnet to direct the cosmic rays to the detectors, essentially, so the detectors can see what’s coming by the station.
So that’s not something that you as crew members of the station would be actively involved in, but it’s using the station as…
Using the station as a research platform to accomplish the science, that’s correct.
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
CG: Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
