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Launch of the space experiment PAMELA
- Publication Year :
- 2008
-
Abstract
- 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.<br />Accepted for publication on Advances in Space Research
- Subjects :
- Ionizing radiation
Space experiments
Antimatter
Atoms
Energy ranges
Atmospheric Science
Satellite-borne experiment
Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
FOS: Physical sciences
Aerospace Engineering
Electrons
Cosmic ray
Scintillator
Astrophysics
Settore FIS/04 - Fisica Nucleare e Subnucleare
law.invention
Nuclear physics
Solar energy
law
Neutron detection
Nuclear Experiment
Cosmic rays
Physics
Charged particles
Cosmology
Experiments
Protons
Spectrometer
PAMELA detector
Astrophysics (astro-ph)
Detector
Astronomy
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Satellite borne experiment
Geophysics
Space and Planetary Science
Antiproton
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
High Energy Physics::Experiment
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b3bd85609979819e3d6c5e3978339648