Is Anybody Out There, Among the Stars?

Dr. Samuel Ting's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the ISS is the first precision particle physics detector in space. It's looking for the origins of the universe, and the new Disney+ docuseries Among the Stars is along for the ride.

Among the Stars, a six-part docu-series that premieres Oct. 6 on Disney+, is a classic hero’s journey. Filmed over two years, just before COVID, the arc of the story follows the astronauts currently onboard the International Space Station—including NASA astronaut Captain Chris Cassidy as he completes his last mission—plus those on Earth supporting the missions.

But when we got a sneak peek at the episodes ahead of the transmission date, one person stood out: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. Samuel Ting from MIT—in part because he’s searching for the origins of the universe.

Via his mega-experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a 7.5-ton module that sits atop the ISS, Dr. Ting has been "sifting space" since 2011, looking for evidence of dark matter. The AMS involves 44 institutions from America, Europe, and Asia, and is sponsored by the US Department of Energy and NASA. We spoke with Professor Ting recently to find out more.

Delving Into Dark Matter

To become more than a single-planet species (because, spoiler alert, this one has a termination date), we need to know What’s Out There. Right now, 95% of it is classified as "unknown." We’ve measured 5%, but the rest is—well, that’s what the AMS is trying to find out. We can’t pass through space en route to other galaxies unless we know that, and we can’t examine dark energy, dark matter, and whatever else is lurking beyond our own galaxy, from Earth.

Dr. Ting working on the AMS. (Photo: NASA)

"All the elements we have on Earth also exist in space; those particles carry signals of how the universe is created, how particles travel, but you cannot measure them on the ground,” explains Dr. Ting. “Because we live under 100 kilometers of atmosphere, particles entering into the atmosphere just break apart.”

Which is why the AMS is in space, where it can not only collect and model the particles before they hit Earth’s atmosphere, but examine the properties of these particles, and, crucially, how they are charged, where they came from, and so on. It’s an extraordinary piece of scientific equipment, which has modeled 180 billion cosmic rays (to date) into 300,000 data channels that are analyzed by its 600 onboard computers. 

Activating Antimatter

Dr. Ting at a 2013 press conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. (Photo: NASA/James Blair)

However, to model energy and momentum, you need a magnet to observe the particle spin (positive one way, negative the other). A magnet on a space station? Isn’t that dangerous? Yes. But Dr. Ting found a way to have a magnet that doesn't rotate in space, one of the many groundbreaking innovations that make up the AMS.

“My first experiment was in 1965,” says Dr. Ting of the project's origins. “This was the first heavy antimatter ever found, the Anti Deuterons." (A Deuteron is a proton plus a neutron; Anti Deuterons is an antiproton plus an anti neutron.)

Cut to April 1994, when Dr. Ting was walking in the backyard of his house in France, thinking about what he should do next. “By that point, I’d been doing experiments on accelerators my whole life, [and thought] maybe I should do something new. Something I know nothing about, something that nobody thought was possible. That’s when I thought about putting a Magnetic Spectrometer in space to look for dark matter, to understand the origin of the cosmic universe. Initially it was quite difficult because nobody thought such a thing could go to space. But eventually we figured out a way to do that.“

T-Minus 10 - 9 - 8 

(Photo: NASA)

Under the auspices of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), NASA, and other international space agencies, Professor Ting worked on the project for decades, alongside a team of scientists from 16 countries. By 2011, the AMS was ready to go up and be installed on the ISS; it was transported by the Space Shuttle Endeavour's last mission.

Dr. Ting with the AMS team in 2011 (Photo: NASA)

Dr. Ting recalls going to the Kennedy Space Center to witness take-off. “Somebody from the Kennedy Space Center took a photo of me. And I remember my whole feeling, my whole body was ice cold. And I was so tense. The night before the launch, I went with my wife to the launch pad. We could not go in; they were fueling the liquid into the shuttle. So coming back, I must be extremely nervous because I was driving at a rather high speed. The Kennedy Space Center police stopped me, and said: ‘You’re driving awfully fast.’  That’s when I realized I wasn’t even carrying my license either.”

Houston, We Have a Problem

More than 10 years later, the drama continues in Among the Stars, which details an unsettling problem with the AMS: The $2 billion dollar space instrument has a cooling issue and needs urgent repairs. This is not a simple matter when one is orbiting 260 miles above Earth in an extreme environment where temperatures swing between 250 degrees Fahrenheit in direct sunlight to minus 200 degrees by nightfall.

Surrounded by the documentary makers’ cameras, the NASA team fuels up on sodas and chips while staring down at their laptops as Dr. Ting cross-examines them. It’s a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into how one maintains control over a massive scientific experiment, the likes of which may never be repeated in our lifetime.

The AMS is scheduled to remain up on the ISS for the length of its service, which is tentatively scheduled to end in 2024. NASA would like to extend its life, but political spats with international partners like Russia, not to mention aging equipment, mean that's still up in the air.

In the meantime, as the docu-series reveals, the cooling issue situation requires an entirely custom toolset. This is not stuff you can just pick up at the hardware store, after all. In an interesting episode segment, aerospace engineer Heather Bergman lets us into her lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where she talks us through the SWAGE tool (a metal-on-metal seal that won’t leak), bolt cutters, and other space-ready materials. 

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano during a November 2019 spacewalk to fix the AMS. (Photo: NASA)

In particularly breathtaking footage, we see the astronauts on a spacewalk to carry out repairs, while, below at NASA Johnson, Dr. Ting and the team participate on a live feed. It’s nail-biting stuff and—no spoilers here—clearly a lot is at stake (like the future of our species).  

“The unique feature of humans is curiosity,” Professor Ting says. “If you do not do research, you'll never know what happened. A few 100 years ago, we thought the Earth was flat, that we were in the center of the universe. After a few 100 years of research, we realize Earth is a very small part of the universe. So, if you don't do research, you would never know this. That’s what we’re doing with the AMS.” 

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