Launch and commissioning of the PAMELA experiment on board the Resurs-DK1 satellite |
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Authors: | M Casolino P Picozza On behalf of the PAMELA collaboration |
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Institution: | aINFN, Structure of Rome “Tor Vergata” and Physics Department of University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, I-00133 Rome, Italy |
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Abstract: | PAMELA is a satellite borne experiment designed to study with great accuracy cosmic rays of galactic, solar, and trapped nature in a wide energy range (protons: 80 MeV–700 GeV, electrons 50 MeV–400 GeV). Main objective is the study of the antimatter component: antiprotons (80 MeV–190 GeV), positrons (50 MeV–270 GeV) and search for antimatter (with a precision of the order of 10−8). The experiment, housed on board the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite, was launched on June, 15th 2006 in a 350 × 600 km orbit with an inclination of 70°. The detector consists of a permanent magnet spectrometer core to provide rigidity and charge sign information, a Time-of-Flight system for velocity and charge information, a silicon–tungsten calorimeter and a neutron detector for lepton/hadron identification. An anticounter system is used off-line to reject false triggers coming from the satellite. In self-trigger mode the calorimeter, the neutron detector and a shower tail catcher are capable of an independent measure of the lepton (e+ + e−) component up to 2 TeV. In this work we focus on the first months of operations of the experiment during the commissioning phase. |
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Keywords: | Cosmic rays Antimatter Satellite-borne experiment |
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