Facilities and Experiments

Experiments at the Cosmic Frontier

Project Status: Commissioning/Under Construction

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

AMS is a particle detector for the International Space Station that will search in space for dark matter, missing matter and antimatter. Space is full of high-energy particles of many types, collectively called "cosmic rays", many of them originating in supernova explosions in distant galaxies. AMS detects them using a huge superconducting magnet and six highly specialized, ultra-precise detectors. It will sit on the International Space Station - far above the obscuring atmosphere - and gather data for three years.