As stated in the official congratulations letter the film really speaks “to our mission of bringing closer together science/art and of communicating science in novel, visually-stimulating and narrative-driven ways”.
AMS Collaboration is very honoured to bring the story of the experiment in New York for this event.

The Italian segment of the tour will start  on September 19th in Rome with a meeting with the Pope in Castelgandolfo, followed by a press conference at the Italian Space Agency headquarters. The following day both crews will visit INFN Gran Sasso Underground National Laboratory while on September 21st, the crews will visit Pisa.
The STS134 astronauts will continue the tour visiting INFN Laboratories in Perugia and Terni on the 22nd.  On the morning of  September 23rd, both crews will meet students and professors at the Physics Department of the Sapienza University in Rome: during the afternoon the Expedition 26/27 crew will meet the President of Italy.
The last day is scheduled in Bologna on September 24th, including a mandatory visit to Ferrari’s factories in Maranello.
The tour will be a unique opportunity to meet the astronauts and to talk about AMS-02 with the people that took part in this exciting mission now regularly collecting cosmic ray  data on the ISS.

In this video 16 years of preparation of AMS-02 become few blinks. The construction of AMS-02 is the result of a  worldwide effort undertaken by scientists from 16 different countries who now started analyzing the wealth of data downlinked from the ISS, looking for new, unexpected phenomena.

The transition started on Wenesday June 22nd, and took place smoothly, initially with two shifts overlapping between JSC and CERN.  The average experiment donwlink rate is about 10 Mbps, with peaks at higher rate  to cope with the periods when the downlink channel is not available.

On June 26th the POCC has been inaugurated at the presence of two exceptional guests, Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator and Rolf Heuer, CERN DG.

Through the summer AMS-02 will collect several billions of Cosmic Rays events, which, after reception at CERN, will be deframed and reconstructed at the CERN Science Operation Centers, before being sent to the various regional centers for calibration and analysis.

Credit: NASA

The AMS-02 team has been very busy during the last month to ensure that the data were collected properly: it is a continuous flow of data at about 10 Mega bit per second (Mbps), which requires on-line storage, monitoring and processing. While a group of people takes shift for monitoring the correct operation of the experiment in space, another team makes sure that data are properly processed by a cluster of computers at CERN, before distribution to the regional centers for specific detector related analysis and calibrations.
The experiment  is  controlled from the POCC 24/7: each subsystem has a dedicated monitor desk, a special position is devoted to data flow, one to the commanding function, the only one which can issue commands to be uploaded by the ISS control center in Marshall. So far nearly 3 TB have been sent to ground from AMS-02.

AMS-02 people control monitors at POCC - JSC

AMS-02 detectors operate at typical temperatures a few degrees above 0 C, although there are slow seasonal variations due to the continuous changes of the ISS attitude towards the sun.

On June the 24th the POCC has started operating at CERN, Geneva.  There AMS-02 will be controlled all along its long life in space.

The detectors started operating smoothly and nominally since the beginnng of its life on ISS. We are since collecting data at a 9 Mbps average downlink rate, accumulating millions of Cosmic Ray events.

During the second half of June, the AMS-02 team will move to the newly built POCC at CERN: with AMS-02 installed on the ISS, the flight back from JSC – Houston to Geneve won’t be as spectacular as the one we had last august  on the C5-M.

Ten seconds after the liftoff - Credit: Michael Struik - CERN

The shuttle docking to ISS occurred on FD 3 at 06:15 a.m. EDT. First, ELC-3 was transferred to ISS, then at 3 a.m. o’clock EDT of FD4, AMS-02 installation begun. The Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), or Shuttle robotic arm, started grappling AMS02. The experiment, in a switched off mode, was unberthed (the remotely operated electrical umbilical was removed), and moved out of the payload bay in handoff position; then the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) or ISS Canadarm grappled it, and delivered it to its permanent position outside the Station.

AMS02 being extracted from the Shuttle Bay - Credit: NASA

All these operations were remotely performed by four astronauts: the Shuttle arm was operated by Roberto Vittori and Drew Feustel; the ISS arm by Gregory Johnson and Gregory Chamitoff.
Still hooked to ISS Arm, AMS-02 was fed with 2 Amps of power from SSRMS to control heaters. Three hours after the beginning of the operations, the capture was completed with the closing fixture latched.

AMS02 being installed on the ISS truss S3 - Credit: NASA

A few minutes after the completion of the capture, professor Samuel Ting eschanged a few words with the STS-134 crew, thanking them for “a great ride and a safe delivery”. “You made a great contribution to our understanding of the Universe” said the Nobelist and added: ” I look forward to see you in Geneva (at CERN)”.
Now AMS is sitting on the S3 truss payload attach site and is in nominal data taking operations. A new scientific challenge has just begun!

AMS-02 team is really excited and concentrated at the same time: at JSC people are ready at the POCC (Payload Operation Control Center), hosted inside the BFCR (Blue Flight Control Room) at the MCC-H (Mission Control Center – Houston), from where they will control AMS-02 first operations. Three hours after the launch AMS-02 thermal control system will indeed be activated and data transmission checked; power will be applied to the experiment three times during its journey inside the shuttle till FD 4th. On Thursday May 19th AMS-02 will finally be transferred to the ISS and activated.

You can follow the launch at NASA, NASA High Res, ESA and CERN channels. Go Endeavour!