First Results from the KASCADE Air-Shower Experiment

A new extensive air shower (EAS) experiment has been installed at the laboratory site of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The major goal of the experiment is to determine the chemical composition in the energy range around and above the knee of the primary cosmic ray spectrum. An important advantage of the installation is the capability to simultaneously measure the electromagnetic, muonic and hadronic components of EAS event-by-event, thereby reducing systematic uncertainties to a large extend. Data taking with a large part of the experiment has started at the end of 1995 with further installations continuing during 1996. First preliminary results are presented.