Performance Results of the AMS-01 Aerogel Threshold Cherenkov

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) was flown in june 1998 on board of the space shuttle Discovery (flight STS-91) at an altitude ranging between 320 and 390 km. This preliminary version of AMS included an Aerogel Threshold Cherenkov detector (ATC) to separate antiprotons from electron background, for momenta less than 3.5 GeV/c. In this paper, the design and physical principles of ATC will be discussed briefly, then the performance results of the ATC will be presented.