Media watch as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS is offloaded from an Air Force C-5M aircraft on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway.

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, media and workers watch as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is offloaded from an Air Force C-5M aircraft on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway. One of NASA's T-38 training jets, flown by a member of the STS-134 crew, is in the foreground. The state-of-the-art particle physics detector arrived from Europe and will operate as an external module on the International Space Station to study the universe and its origin by searching for dark matter.

AMS will fly to the station aboard space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission targeted to launch Feb. 26, 2011. Photo credit: NASA/Frankie Martin