On Saturday, November 16, 2024, the signing of the Extension of the International Agreement for the operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory until 2035 was held in the city of Malargüe, province of Mendoza. This is a new milestone for one of the most ambitious scientific projects, which will allow it to continue updating its facilities and technologies in the detection and collection of new information about the enigmatic “messengers of the universe”, ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

The event took place on the same day that Malargüe celebrated its 74th anniversary, so the scientists and workers of the Observatory participated in the traditional parade held by the community. Then, they met at the Thesaurus Convention and Exhibition Center where the official signing of the new International Extension Agreement took place.

The ceremony was attended by the vice-governor of the province of Mendoza, Hebe Casado; the president of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), Germán Guido Lavalle; the president of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Daniel Salamone; the national director of Planning and International Affairs of Research, Science and Technology, Marcelo Marzocchini; the national senator and second vice president of the Chamber of Deputies, Julio Cobos; and the mayor of Malargüe, Celso Jaque.

Also present at the table of authorities were Dr. Alberto Etchegoyen, director of the Pierre Auger Observatory site and representative for Argentina; Dr. Thomas Hirth, vice president of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany; Dr. Antonella Castellina, senior scientist at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and associate in scientific research at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy); Marco Pallavicini, vice president of the INFN (Italy); and the ambassador of the Czech Republic in Argentina, Jarmila Povejšilov.

The agreement was signed by representatives of the project’s funding agencies:

– Hebe Casado; Vice-Governor of the Province of Mendoza (Argentina).
– Germán Guido Lavalle; President of the National Atomic Energy Commission (Argentina).
– Daniel Salamone; President of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research -CONICET- (Argentina).
– Véronique Halloin; Secretary General FNRS (Belgium).
– Gilvan Augusto Alves; President of RENAFAE (Brazil).
– Michael Prouza; Director of FZU (Czech Republic).
– Christelle Roy; Director of CNRS (France).
– Stefan Schwartze; Vice-President for Finance, Human Resources and Infrastructure at KIT (Germany).
– Thomas Hirth; Vice-President for Transfers and International Affairs at KIT (Germany)
– Marc Weber; Head of Division V – Physics and Mathematics at KIT (Germany).
– Marco Pallavicini; Vice-President of INFN (Italy).
– Jorgen D’Hondt; Director of Nikhef (Netherlands).
– Tadeusz Lesiak; Director IFJ PAN (Poland).
– Mário João Martins Pimenta; Representative in the Auger project (Portugal).
– Nicolae Marius Mārginean; Director General IFIN-HH (Romania).
– Boštjan Golob; Rector of the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia).
– John C. Mester; President and CEO of URA (USA).
The following are still pending:
– Dario Leandro Genua; Secretary of Science and Technology of the Nation (Argentina).
– Marco Antonio Zago; President of FAPESP (Brazil).

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest cosmic ray detector in the world. It covers an area of ​​3,000 km2 on the so-called Pampa Amarilla, between the departments of Malargüe and San Rafael, where 1,660 surface detectors and 27 ultra-sensitive fluorescence telescopes are deployed, located in four different sites. The project is managed by an international collaboration involving more than 400 scientists from 17 countries.

“The international scientific community has expressed great interest in the continuity of the Observatory. This is demonstrated by the fact that 17 countries and more than 80 institutions continue to participate and contribute to its operation and improvement. Auger’s scientific results are among the most cited by the international astrophysics community,” said Dr. Ingomar Allekotte, researcher at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) and Pierre Auger Project Manager.

It was in the mid-1990s when Argentine astrophysicist Alberto Etchegoyen, who was responsible for the project on the Argentine side, together with James Cronin, Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1980, began to think that an observatory with such characteristics could have its “base” in Argentina. In 2004 it was formally inaugurated in Malargüe and since then it has worked uninterruptedly in data collection, the results of which revolutionized the understanding of the highest energy phenomena coming from the Universe and enabled important advances in various fields of science.
The Observatory has become an important center of attraction, training and scientific experience at an international level. It articulates the training of human resources at a postgraduate level, so that academics from all over the country and the world come to Malargüe to participate in different events around the study of cosmic rays. Over the years, Pierre Auger and its local staff have made a positive connection with the community and it is one of the main educational and tourist attractions of the province, with a Visitor Center that receives more than 10,000 people annually.

Modernization and new horizons in the study of Astroparticles

In recent years, the Observatory team has worked hard to update, install and put into operation new systems for the surface detectors. In this way, all the electronics were replaced and the solar panels were replaced by more efficient and higher-power panels. In addition, new scintillators, radio detectors and a small phototube were incorporated to expand the dynamic range in each detector.
The AMIGA Project (Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array), is another of the main advances that is added to the Pierre Auger detectors with the objective of expanding the range of energy detection. Its technology was developed entirely in our country by the Institute of Detection and Astroparticle Technologies (ITeDA) – dependent on CNEA, CONICET and UNSAM – and consists of underground detectors for direct measurement of muons, a highly penetrating, high-energy elementary particle, which could help to understand some of the great mysteries about cosmic rays.