Launch of the space experiment PAMELA

• DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2007.07.023
• Publication Date: 2007-07-31T07:27:28Z
• Authors: M. Casolino; P. Picozza; F. Altamura; A. Basili; N. De Simone; V. Di Felice; M.P. De Pascale; L. Marcelli; M. Minori; M. Nagni; R. Sparvoli; A.M. Galper; V.V. Mikhailov; M.F. Runtso; S.A. Voronov; Y.T. Yurkin; V.G. Zverev; G. Castellini; O. Adriani; L. Bonechi; M. Bongi; E. Taddei; E. Vannuccini; D. Fedele; P. Papini; S.B. Ricciarini; P. Spillantini; M. Ambriola; F. Cafagna; C. De Marzo; G.C. Barbarino; D. Campana; G. De Rosa; G. Osteria; S. Russo; G.A. Bazilevskaja; A.N. Kvashnin; O. Maksumov; S. Misin; Yu.I. Stozhkov; E.A. Bogomolov; S.Yu. Krutkov; N.N. Nikonov; V. Bonvicini; M. Boezio; J. Lundquist; E. Mocchiutti; A. Vacchi; G. Zampa; N. Zampa; L. Bongiorno; M. Ricci; P. Carlson; P. Hofverberg; J. Lund; S. Orsi; M. Pearce; W. Menn; M. Simon
• Keywords: PAMELA detector; Calorimeter (particle physics)

Accepted for publication on Advances in Space Research<br/>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, 15, 2006 in a 350*600 km orbit with an inclination of 70 degrees. The detector is composed of a series of scintillator counters arranged at the extremities of a permanent magnet spectrometer to provide charge, Time-of-Flight and rigidity information. Lepton/hadron identification is performed by a Silicon-Tungsten calorimeter and a Neutron detector placed at the bottom of the device. An Anticounter system is used offline 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 component up to 2 TeV. In this work we describe the experiment, its scientific objectives and the performance in the first months after launch.<br/>