Loading the AMS experiment into Endeavour’s cargo bay (Image: NASA)
See more: Tour the mystery matter detector destined for space
Does the universe really hold hidden seams of primordial antimatter, dark matter and even “strange matter”? A massive orbital detector is set to find out
WHEN the off on its final flight to the this month, it will be carrying a very important payload. Secure in the cargo bay will be the , a 6.9-tonne leviathan designed to sift through the perpetual sleet of particles from deep space.
Shortly after Endeavour’s arrival, astronauts will command the shuttle’s robotic arm to from the cargo bay and hand it over, space-relay style, to the ISS’s robotic arm. Once AMS is lowered onto its final resting place on the station’s exterior, the astronauts will undertake a lengthy spacewalk to plug in and power up the space station’s greatest scientific experiment.
If AMS lives up to its billing, this $1.5 billion particle detector will change the way we think about the universe. It could tell us whether whole stars or even galaxies of antimatter exist somewhere out in space: it could tell us about the nature of the dark matter thought to pervade the universe: and it could reveal where the most powerful particle accelerators in nature are hiding.
Breakthroughs in any one of these areas would make the mission a roaring success. But AMS has some unfinished business too. Back in 1998, a prototype found hints of what seems to be an entirely new form of nuclear matter known as “strange…
