Wizard/PAMELA

WIZARD is an experimental program dedicated to the study of Cosmic Rays in a wide energy range (from a few dozens of MeV to a few hundreds of GeV), with especial focus on possible Dark Matter marks and Antimatter components: positrons, antiprotons and the search for antinuclei. This program was previously conducted with experiments located on the edge of stratospheric Balloons and on satellites, producing results that significantly improved the statistics of data available in the literature obtained thanks to first generation experiments. The next step of the program was the PAMELA mission, thanks to an INFN, ASI and ROSCOSMOS agreement, located on the Russian satellite Resurs-DK1, launched from the Baikonur (Kazakistan) base on June 15^th, 2006, on an almost polar orbit.
PAMELA’s main goals are: high precision measurement of spectrums and positron and antiproton fluxes (from 50 MeV to 270 GeV and 80 GeV, respectively); search for antinuclei; the measurement of spectrums’ distortion of antiprotons and positrons caused by the annihilation processes of possible Dark Matter candidates (neutralinos); study of the light isotopic component of cosmic rays, of the solar modulation and of the events originating from the Sun (Solar Flares, Coronal Mass Ejections etc.) and of the radiation zones (trapped particles, almost trapped particles, and of albedo) in the terrestrial magnetosphere.
The mission, originally meant to last three years, is still currently in operation, with an official end date set for the end of 2018.