Precision Cosmic ray Physics on the ISS With the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

One hundred years after their discovery by Victor Hess, Cosmic Rays are nowadays subject of intense research from space based detectors, able to perform for the first time high precision measurement of their composition and spectra as well as of isotropy and time variability. On May 2011, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS – 02), has been installed on the International Space Station, to measure with high accuracy the Cosmic Rays properties searching for rare events which could be indication of the nature of Dark Matter or presence of nuclear Antimatter. AMS – 02 is the result of nearly two decades of effort of an international collaboration, to design and build a state of the art detector capable to perform high precision Cosmic Rays measurement. In this paper I will briefly report on the first results of AMS – 02 two years after the beginning of the operations in space.