NASA Endeavour Shuttle: Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) from CERN

NASA's Endeavour space shuttle - Image courtesy of NASA.

On 29 April the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is due to travel into space on board NASA's Endeavour shuttle.

The AMS detector will be installed as an external module to the international space station where it will study the Universe and its origin by searching for antimatter and dark matter while performing precision measurements of the composition and flux of cosmic rays.

The AMS detector was developed by an international collaboration of over 600 scientists led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting and assembled at CERN.

You can follow a live webcast of the launch broadcast direct from CERN beginning at 9:30pm (local time, Geneva).