Yangbajing International Cosmic Ray Observatory (YICOR) was selected in 1984, built in 1989, and initially completed in 1990. Based on the observation of cosmic rays and their extended atmospheric clusters (EAS) in the atmosphere, the observatory studies cosmic rays, their origin, and related cosmological and microscopic topics.
Current experiments are focused on gamma astronomy, especially in the 100 GeV energy region for which there is currently no effective experimental means, cosmic ray antiproton abundance measurements, ultra-high energy cosmic ray "knee-zone physics", and correlations between solar activity and changes in the solar-terrestrial environment. The main observational equipment is the conventional particle detector array (ASArray) based on multipoint correlation sampling of AS charged particles, or carpet arrays that extend the sampling to full coverage, and neutron monitors for monitoring cosmic ray intensity variations and solar particle events. The wide field of view and the all-weather, year-round continuous operation of such detection arrays are necessary to achieve all-weather scanning and continuous sensitivity. Detection equipment with such characteristics and for the search for unknown emission sources, in-depth study of known sources, especially to capture transient emergencies (such as solar proton events, cosmic γ bursts), is very much in need of and pointing tracking telescopes are difficult to do.
Atmospheres at altitudes less than 4000m will severely attenuate or even absorb cleanly cosmic rays with energies below 100 TeV. The high altitude of Yangbajing (4300m) and its means of continuously encrypting the detection array until it completely covers the ground is the material basis for it to be able to lower the detection threshold to TeV or even 100GeV energy region and to realize the precise determination in the ultra-high energy region.