The silicon tracker of the PAMELA experiment

We describe the silicon tracker that is actually under construction for the PAMELA spectrometer. The readout electronics has been optimized in order to greatly reduce power consumption while providing the very good reliability needed for spatial applications. The silicon sensors used have been fabricated using double-sided, double-metal, AC-coupled technology. A description of the design steps and of the technological choices made, will be given. Finally, we present the results obtained during a beam test using both minimum and non minimum ionizing particles to study the behaviour of the whole system.