Russian and Italian scholars to start researching dark matter of Universe

Russian and Italian scholars try to penetrate into the mysterious world of the dark matter of the Universe by means of the first satellite of Resource DK series constructed in Samara Rocket Center TSSKB-Progress. Resource satellite launching is scheduled for April 2005 from Baikonur with Russian carrier rocket Soyuz, said the official representative of Russian Space Agency Vyacheslav Davydenko.

"Russian-Italian project "Rome-Pamela" is aimed at researching streams of antiparticles, electrons and isotopes of light atomic nuclei in first space emanation", he said.

The Director of the Russian part of the project Arkady Galper said that the "scientific purposes of the experiment are solving such fundamental problems as the nature of dark matter, generation and spreading galaxy space beams, processes on the Sun and solar space beams, particles of high energies in the Earth's magnetosphere". The research will be conducted by means of magnet spectrometer Pamela installed in a special waterproof container, ITAR-TASS reported.

Arkady Galper says that Ёщ of the Universe is occupied by an invisible substance, so-called "dark matter". It is considered to consist of elementary particles.

"If it is so, we will try to define the origin and properties of the particles", Mr. Galper said.

According to Roscosmos, Resource satellite will be working onto the orbit at the altitudes from 360 to 690 kilometers minimum 3 years.