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The Pamela apparatus will allow precise measurements of cosmic rays in Low Earth Orbit, mainly focusing on the antiparticles component. The apparatus is now ready for flight, and the launch is foreseen during June 2006. The paper briefly reports the status of the experiment, and the performances of the various components as measured before the launch.

EGLE is a wide frequency band search- coil magnetometer designed and built at the Roma Tre University. It has been installed onboard the ISS by the Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori on April 25, 2005 within the LAZIO- EGLE experiment carried out during the ENEIDE Soyuz mission. The scope of the experiment is to test EGLE in space and to investigate geomagnetic field variations. The main applications of EGLE are the study of electromagnetic environment inside the ISS, the correlation of magnetic field data with particle fluxes detected by LAZIO particle detector, and the monitoring of ionospheric perturbations possibly caused by Earth seismic activity. Since continuous electromagnetic field measurements on board the ISS are important for diverse space applications, a magnetometer with a suitable design is requested. Appropriate solutions for these applications, which have been adopted by EGLE, are in particular the use of 1- Wire technology and the possibility to detect by means of a search- coil magnetometer a large portion of the ULF frequency band, usually measured by flux- gate probes. To investigate the topside ionosphere electromagnetic environment and stability of Van Allen radiation belts in relation with seismic and anthropogenic electromagnetic emissions, a specific satellite mission (the ESPERIA project) has been designed for the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and up to now a few instruments of its payload have been built and tested in space. One of them is exactly the EGLE search- coil magnetometer. The first magnetic observations performed by this instrument reveal to be promising and demand for a further and deeper analysis based on a longer time series of data.

The PAMELA experiment is a multi-purpose apparatus built around a permanent magnet spectrometer, with the main goal of studying in detail the antiparticle component of cosmic rays. The apparatus will be carried in space by means of a Russian satellite, due to launch in 2005, for a three year-long mission. The characteristics of the detectors composing the instrument, alongside the long lifetime of the mission and the orbital characteristics of the satellite, will allow to address several items of cosmic-ray physics. In this paper, we will focus on the solar and heliospheric observation capabilities of PAMELA.

The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was used to inspect collagen fibrils deposited on mica sheets at different fibrillogenesis times. Collagen was obtained from rat tail tendon fibers. Various fibril forms were observed, together with the characteristic periodic intra-fibril structure (D-bands). The fibril thickness, width, D-band periodicity and depth were measured and the statistical distribution of these parameters at 1, 2, 5, 10 and 15 days of in vitro fibril formation time was calculated. The fibrils showed an increasing size with time, but the band interval measure remained stable. The band depth, after an initial increase, exhibited a relative steadiness. The results indicate that AFM offers, at low resolution, images qualitatively similar to those obtained with electron microscopy, but with less manipulation of the sample. A quantitative evaluation of collagen structural features in the nanometer scale is made possible by AFM.

PAMELA is a satellite borne experiment designed to study with great accuracy cosmic rays of galactic, solar, and trapped nature in a wide energy range protons: 80 MeV-700 GeV, electrons 50 MeV-400 GeV). Main objective is the study of the antimatter component: antiprotons (80 MeV-190 GeV), positrons (50 MeV-270 GeV) and search for antimatter with a precision of the order of 10^-8). The experiment, housed on board the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite, was launched on June, 15, 2006 in a 350*600 km orbit with an inclination of 70 degrees. The detector is composed of a series of scintillator counters arranged at the extremities of a permanent magnet spectrometer to provide charge, Time-of-Flight and rigidity information. Lepton/hadron identification is performed by a Silicon-Tungsten calorimeter and a Neutron detector placed at the bottom of the device. An Anticounter system is used offline to reject false triggers coming from the satellite. In self-trigger mode the Calorimeter, the neutron detector and a shower tail catcher are capable of an independent measure of the lepton component up to 2 TeV. In this work we describe the experiment, its scientific objectives and the performance in the first months after launch., Accepted for publication on Advances in Space Research

The PAMELA experiment is a satellite-borne apparatus designed to study charged particles in the cosmic radiation with a particular focus on antiparticles. PAMELA is mounted on the Resurs DK1 satellite that was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on June 15th 2006. The PAMELA apparatus comprises a time-of-flight system, a magnetic spectrometer, a silicon-tungsten electromagnetic calorimeter, an anticoincidence system, a shower tail catcher scintillator and a neutron detector. The combination of these devices allows antiparticles to be reliably identified from a large background of other charged particles. This paper reviews the design, space qualification and on-ground performance of PAMELA. The in-orbit performance will be discussed in future publications., Replaced some paragraphs in text and some pictures

Silicon Photomultipliers (Si-PM) consist of an array of semiconductor photodiodes joint on the common substrate and operating in limited geiger mode. A new generation of Si-PM is currently under test in INFN Rome Tor Vergata facilities: they consist of a 5625 element, 3 * 3 mm 2 array with an improved light response. These elements have been characterized. Furthermore, a functional model of the Si-PM has been developed to be used in a VLSI development of front-end electronics.