The PAMELA experiment: A space-borne observatory for heliospheric phenomena

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The PAMELA experiment: A space-borne observatory for heliospheric phenomena

Casolino, M. / Picozza, P.

AbstractPAMELA is a multi-purpose apparatus 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. The device was put into orbit on June 15th 2006 in a pressurized container on board the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite. The satellite is flying along a high inclination (70°), low Earth orbit (350–600km), allowing to perform measurements in different points and conditions of the geomagnetosphere. PAMELA main goal is a precise measurement of the antimatter ( $\bar{p}$ 80MeV–190GeV, e⁺ 50MeV–270GeV) and matter (p 80–700GeV, e⁻ 50MeV–400GeV) component of the galactic cosmic rays. In this paper we focus on the capabilites of observations of heliospheric cosmic rays: trapped and semi-trapped particles in the proton and electron belts, solar particle events, Jovian electrons will be studied in the three years of expected mission.