Spaceborne Experiments

Abstract

The Universe is the ultimate laboratory to understand the laws of nature. Under the action of the fundamental forces, lasting infinitesimal times or billion of years, matter and energy reach most extreme conditions. Using sophisticated instruments capable to select the signals reaching us from the depths of space and of time, we are able to extract information otherwise not obtainable with the most sophisticated ground based experiments. The results of these observations deeply influence the way we today look at the Universe and try to understand it. During hundreds of thousands of years we have observed the sky only using our eyes, accessing in this way only the very small part of the electromagnetic radiation which is able to traverse the atmosphere, the visible light. The first telescope observations by Galileo in 1609, which dramatically changed our understanding of the solar system, yet were based only on the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Only during the second half of the twentieth century we started to access wider parts of the spectrum. After the end of the war, using the new radar related technology, the scientists developed the radio telescopes to record the first radio images of the galaxy. But only in the 60's, with the advent of the first man made satellites, we began to access the much wider e.m. spectrum, including infrared, UV, X-ray and γ-ray radiation. A similar situation happened with the charged cosmic radiation. Cosmic Rays, discovered by Hess in 1912 [1] using electrometers operated on atmospheric balloons, for about 40 years were the subject of very intense studies. The discovery of a realm of new particles using CR experiments, gave birth to particle physics