with the Hubble Space Telescope. CALET is an
astrophysics mission that searches for signatures of
dark matter and provides the highest energy direct measurements of the
cosmic ray electron spectrum in order to observe discrete sources of high-energy
particle acceleration in our local region of the
galaxy. The mission was developed and sponsored by the
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), involving teams from Japan, Italy, and the United States. It seeks to understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays in our galaxy, to identify their sources of acceleration, their elemental composition as a function of energy, and possibly to unveil the nature of dark matter. CALET may also yield evidence of rare interactions between
matter and dark matter by working in synergy with the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) – also aboard the
ISS – that is looking at
positrons and
antiprotons to identify dark matter. CALET contains a sub-payload CIRC (Compact Infrared Camera) to observe the Earth's surface in order to detect
forest fires. ==Objectives==