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An advanced scientific payload set to fly aboard space shuttle Endeavour in 2011 is beginning final

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preparations for its upcoming flight to the International Space Station.

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The pioneering Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 experiment arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Aug.

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26 aboard a U.S. Air Force C-5M cargo aircraft.

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Known as AMS, the high-tech device could lead to new discoveries about the universe and its origin.

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AMS will use a powerful magnet and cutting-edge particle physics detector to measure the

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charged particles within cosmic rays.

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The project is a longtime dream of the experiment's principal investigator,

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Nobel Prize-winner Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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He and other scientists are excited about the possibility of finding signatures

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of dark matter and antimatter among those particles.

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These particles carry charge. Because it carries a charge, it must have a mass.

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Because it has a mass, it's absorbing Earth's atmosphere. Therefore, you have to go to space.

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Scientists and engineers from 16 countries contributed to AMS, making it a perfect addition to the

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International Space Station.

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Led by Commander Mark Kelly, all six STS-134 astronauts were at Kennedy to

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watch as their payload arrived.

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The nearly 15,000-pound experiment will be robotically installed on the station's main truss during

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shuttle Endeavour's final scheduled mission.

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We're going to pick it up with the Canadian robotic arm that's inside the space shuttle, just pick it

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right up, stretch out the arm. And then the space station robotic arm, also made by Canada,

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Canadarm 2, is going to take the AMS and it's called a handoff, just like in football,

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grab it and we're going to put it right on the space station.

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AMS will go through a few months of final testing in Kennedy's

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Space Station Processing Facility before it is loaded into Endeavour's payload bay.

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Once it reaches its final destination in orbit, the experiment is expected to operate for