The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a large acceptance cosmic-ray detector (0.5m2sr) designed to operate at an altitude of 400km on the International Space Station. The AMS-02 silicon tracker contains 2264 silicon microstrip sensors (total active area 6.75m2). The internal alignment parameters of the assembled tracker have been determined on the ground with cosmic-ray muons. The alignment procedure is described and results for the alignment precision

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) and SiPM matrices optimized for the detection of blue light have been developed at FBK-irst. The first devices produced are composed of 625 microcells with 40umx40um size, in a 1 mm x 1 mm active area. The devices have a breakdown voltage around 30 V, and a gain about 10(6). The DASIPM Collaboration is evaluating their performance and possible applications in high-energy physics, space physics and medical imaging.

Detection of low levels of light is one of the key aspects in medical and space applications. Silicon photomultiplier,a novel type of avalanche photodetector which operates in Geiger mode, shows promising results and offer superior design options.The performance characteristics of the SiPM realized in FBK-irst are studied and presented in this paper. The leakage current, dark rate and internal gain are characterized as a function of temperature.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), installed on the International Space Station will provide precise measurements of the cosmic ray spectra in the GeV to TeV energy range, and will search for cosmological antimatter and dark matter. A first version of the detector was operated successfully during a precursor flight on the space shuttle Discovery in June 1998 (STS-91). The magnetic spectrometer uses a large area (7.2 m2) silicon microstrip detector

In the frame of INFN-ITC-irst collaboration new Silicon PhotoMultiplier (SiPM) prototypes have been produced at ITC-irst (Trento, Italy). Each SiPM covers an area of 1mm2 and brings together 625 micro-cells of 40x40 um2 size connected in parallel as to form a single read-out element. Each micro-cell consists of a Geiger Mode Avalanche Photodiode (GM-APD) in series with its quenching resistance. This article reports the main characteristics of these

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS01), a high-sensitivity particle spectrometer, was successfully flown for 10d in June 1998 (STS91) in the orbit of the International Space Station (51.7deg, cca.380 km). A high-statistics dataset of galactic cosmic rays were measured as a function of geomagnetic latitude, including the primary protons, leptons and helium as well as the trapped and quasi-trapped proton and lepton components. In this paper, the absorbed