Experience in the assembly of the large area silicon tracker for the AMS experiment

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), installed on the International Space Station will provide precise measurements of the cosmic ray spectra in the GeV to TeV energy range, and will search for cosmological antimatter and dark matter. A first version of the detector was operated successfully during a precursor flight on the space shuttle Discovery in June 1998 (STS-91). The magnetic spectrometer uses a large area (7.2 m2) silicon microstrip detector providing 10 μm spatial resolution for the bending coordinate. Here we briefly report on the design of the AMS tracker, its construction status and some innovative assembly techniques we have developed.