WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Nobel laureate Professor Samuel C. C. Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pauses for a photo in the Space Station Processing Facility. Dr. Ting is directing an experiment, an international collaboration of some 37 universities and laboratories, using a state-of-the-art particle physics detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which will fly on a future launch to the International Space Station. Using the unique environment of space, the AMS will study the properties and origin of cosmic particles and nuclei including antimatter and dark matter. AMS flew initially as a Space Shuttle payload on the June 1998 mission STS-91 that provided the investigating team with data on background sources and verified the detector's performance under actual space flight conditions. The detector's second space flight is scheduled to be launched on mission UF-4 October 2003 for installation on the Space Station as an attached payload. Current plans call for operating the detector for three years before it is returned to Earth on the Shuttle. Using the Space Station offers the science team the opportunity to conduct the long-duration research above the Earth's atmosphere necessary to collect sufficient data required to accomplish the science objectives.