The AMS-02 transition radiation detector

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS02 will be equipped with a large transition radiation detector (TRD) to achieve a proton background suppression necessary for dark matter searches. The AMS02 TRD consists of 20 layers of fleece radiator each with Xe / CO 2 proportional wire straw tubes read out by a dedicated low-power data-acquisition system. A space-qualified TRD design will be presented. The performance of a 20-layer prototype was tested at CERN with electron, myon and pion beams up to 100 GeV and with protons up to 250 GeV. The beam-test results will be compared to Geant3 MC predictions. The detector is under construction at RWTH Aachen; the gas system will be built at MIT, slow-control at MIT and INFN Rome and DAQ at TH Karlsruhe. This project is funded by the German Space Agency DLR, the US Department of Energy DOE and NASA.