The cosmic detector that required a series of difficult spacewalking repairs is back in action.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is working better than ever, Samuel Ting, the Nobel laureate who oversees the instrument, said.
The $2 billion spectrometer — the International Space Station’s premier science instrument — has now measured 152 billion charged cosmic rays in its hunt for elusive antimatter and dark matter, said Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A pair of astronauts conducted four spacewalks, beginning in November, to replace the spectrometer’s failing cooling system.
The final spacewalk, last week, was the only one where Ting was not at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston. Instead, he was in Switzerland at the control room for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which helps…