Recent Progress in Direct Measurements of Cosmic Rays

Recent years have seen significant progress in direct measurements of cosmic rays, particularly with successful space missions and long-duration balloon flights over Antarctica. The high precision data from these missions spanning a wide energy range have led to surprising discoveries, such as an excess of positrons at high energies and a bump-like structure of the elemental spectra below the “knee.” These unexpected spectral features present challenges for Galactic cosmic-ray models on their origin, propagation, and acceleration. Recent results and their implications will be presented, and the outlook will be discussed.