CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo / NASA - AMS-02 Mission patch.
May 19, 2017
Image above: Astronaut Peggy Whitson during the 200th spacewalk from the International Space Station (Image credit: NASA).
The 200th spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) included a new installation on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) – a particle-physics detector that was assembled at CERN.
On 12 May, Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA conducted the four-hour spacewalk, while ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet stayed inside the ISS to drive the station arm that positions the two astronauts.
One of their tasks involved replacing a cable with a bus terminator – a type of connector – to carry data between AMS and the space shuttle. During the spacewalk, the AMS team stationed at CERN in the experiment’s Payload and Operations Control Centre (POCC), were able to check that the bus terminator was properly functioning. This connection will be used from 2018, when a new thermal cooling system for the AMS silicon tracker is put into place.
The AMS cooling pump system was developed by the collaboration at CERN, and a similar system is now also used by some of the LHC experiments to cool their trackers. Despite only needing one pump, AMS was flown to space with four. Now, three of the four pumps are no longer functioning and so multiple spacewalks are planned for 2018 to replace these with a new cooling system, which would extend the life of AMS in space by 12 years.
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on ISS. Image Credit: NASA
AMS was launched in 2011 on the penultimate flight of the Space Shuttle and has been collecting data during the last six years. It is a particle-physics detector looking for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter and also performs precision measurements of cosmic rays. It reached the milestone of recording 100 billion cosmic ray events on 8 May.
Note:
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.
Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.
Related article:
200th Station Spacewalk Comes to an End
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2017/05/200th-station-spacewalk-comes-to-end.html
Related links:
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS): http://home.cern/about/experiments/ams
LHC experiments: http://home.cern/about/experiments
For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: http://home.cern/
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Paola Catapano.
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