High Energy Light Isotope eXperiment
HELIX is a balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the chemical and isotopic abundances of light cosmic ray nuclei. Measurements
by HELIX, especially of 10Be from 0.2 GeV/n to beyond 3 GeV/n, will provide an essential set of data for the study of propagation processes of
the cosmic rays. HELIX consists of a 1 Tesla superconducting magnet with a high-resolution drift-chamber tracker, time of flight detector, and a ring-imaging
Cherenkov detector. The instrument is planned to have a long-duration balloon flight during an upcoming northern or southern hemisphere balloon campaign.
Measurements of this kind at lower energies have in the past provided profound insights into the nature and origin of cosmic rays,
revealing, for instance, information about acceleration
and confinement timescales, and exposing some conspicuous discrepancies between solar
and cosmic-ray abundances.