NASA Plans Antimatter Detector

NASA has plans to send the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on a currently unplanned shuttle mission in 2010. The AMS probe will become part of the International Space Station. Its mission is to search for antimatter particles in space.

A particle of antimatter is the opposite of regular matter (positron to electron, proton to anti-proton). It is theorized that there should be just as much antimatter as matter in the universe, but we have only found a very small amount of it to date.

This mission would require congress to approve one extra shuttle mission.