The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will soon take part in several challenging spacewalks to service the International Space Station’s largest scientific instrument.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a sub-atomic particle detector that looks for dark matter, antimatter and measures cosmic rays - high energy particles that travel through space at close to the speed of light.
The AMS took 16 countries nearly 20 years to develop. It was assembled at CERN, tested at ESA’s ESTEC facility in The Netherlands and installed on the Space Station in 2011. Since then it has collected over 145 billion cosmic ray events across a range of energy levels and has already provided the first insights into potential antimatter and dark matter.
The maintenance of the AMS’ cooling system will ensure it can continue to provide more data and groundbreaking science. This film contains soundbites from the instrument’s Principal Investigator, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Samuel Ting (MIT/CERN).