Launch in orbit of the telescope NINA for cosmic ray observations: preliminary results

On July the 10(th), 1998 the telescope NINA was launched in space on board the Russian satellite Resurs-01 n.4. The scientific task of the mission is the study of the galactic, solar and anomalous components of the cosmic rays in the energy interval 10-200 MeV/n for contained particles. The core of NINA is a segmented silicon detector mounted onto the satellite so to point to the zenith. In this paper we report about the cosmic ray measurements performed by the telescope during its first 6 months of operation.