The antimatter spectrometer (AMS-02): A particle physics detector in space

Antimatter spectrometer (AMS)-02 is a spaceborne magnetic spectrometer designed to measure with accuracies up to one part in 109 the composition of cosmic rays near the Earth. With a large acceptance (5000 cm2 sr), an intense magnetic field from a superconducting magnet (0.7 T) and an accurate particle identifications AMS-02 will provide the highest accuracy in cosmic rays measurements up to the TeV region. During a 3-year long mission on the International Space Station (ISS) AMS-02 will achieve a sensitivity to the existence of anti-He in the cosmic rays of one part in a billion as well as important informations on the origin of Dark Matter. We review the status of the construction of the AMS-02 experiment in preparation for the 3-year mission on the ISS.