NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), using the power and data transmission capabilities of the International Space Station, is a particle physics detector designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays. Its experiments are designed to help researchers study the formation of the universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter. It has collected more than 31 billion points of data since its activation May 19, 2011. Researchers from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland are publishing their first findings after sifting through the mountain of data that may change our concept of the cosmos. AMS was launched on STS-134, the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour. AMS continues to gather data on about 1.4 billion hits every month. Nobel-laureate Dr. Samuel Ting is the leader of the research team.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations
Mark Sistilli, NASA AMS Program Manager
Center Contact: Josh Byerly, 281-483-5111
HQ Contact: Trent Perrotto, 202-358-1100
For more info: www.nasa.gov

Cut 1 - William Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations

TRT – 00:17 “Space Station is a really nice platform well suited for this instrument, it allows for a long, long duration of observation time which is important to this instrument.  We can essentially use decades of observation time which will help to reduce the statistics in certain low frequency events and station is a great platform for that.”
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Cut 2 - Mark Sistilli, NASA AMS Program Manager

TRT – 00:14 “What AMS has done is made a high precision measurement of the spectrum and it has detected spectral features which perhaps in the future can provide us with additional information on the nature of this excess. “
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