Monday, the astronauts trekked from the Aiguille du Midi to the present Refuge des Cosmiques to place the historic milestone plate. Cern, in a statement beforehand, noted that
“Their mission (code-named STS-134) was to install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the dark matter and antimatter detector designed at Cern, on the International Space Station. Since then, AMS has been sending over 18 billion cosmic rays events from space to the Payload and Operations Control Centre, on the Cern site.
“In 1943, a laboratory was established by the French CNRS-National Centre for Scientific Research at 3613 m above sea level, on the Col du Midi, Mt Blanc, under the aegis of Louis Leprince-Ringuet, to study the cosmic rays and their applications in nuclear physics. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays (Victor Hess, 1912) and after one year of cosmic ray detection from the International Space Station, the astronauts who flew AMS to the International Space Station will walk from the Aiguille du Midi to the present Refuge des Cosmiques.”
Cern scientists will then have an opportunity to meet the men responsible for getting the AMS up to the space station, during a visit by the astronauts and their spouses, one of whom is Gabrielle Giffords, wife of mission commander Mark Kelly, who was a US House Representative from Arizona, from 2007 to 2012. She was badly wounded in a shooting incident shortly before the mission left.
http://genevalunch.com/blog/2012/07/23/geneva-cern-welcome-astronauts-100-yrs-after-cosmic-rays-discovered/It's not clear if Ms. Giffords did that too; I've done it myself a few times (I could recognise it just from the photos), and it needs good confidence on a narrow, steep snow ridge - if she could do it then she's making an excellent recovery. With only one ice axe visible between her and he husband, I think she probably didn't do the walk.
On edit: WSJ blog says she didn't:
ON TOP OF THE WORLD: Former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, center, stood with husband Mark Kelly, right, and mountain guide Vincent Lameyre before Mr. Kelly and two others walked from L’Aiguille du Midi to the Refuge des Cosmiques near Mont-Blanc in Chamonix Monday. The walk was to unveil a milestone plate for the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays by Victor Hess in 1912, and marks the 14-month anniversary of the installation of the cosmic ray detector on the international space station. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)
http://blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/2012/07/23/photos-of-the-day-july-23/
= new reply since forum marked as read
