AMS: issues and prospects

AMS will be launched in the second half of 2010 and installed on the International Space Station.

Thanks to its ability to identify and to measure simultaneously fluxes of protons, antiprotons, electrons, positrons, gamma rays and nuclei in a large acceptance detector and on an extended energy range, AMS will improve the knowledge of standard mechanisms governing the propagation of cosmic rays and will probe the existence of new physics, such as the nature of Dark Matter.