Since May 2011 the AMS-02 experiment is installed on the International Space Station and is observing cosmic radiation .
It consists of several state-of-the-art sub-detectors , which redundantly measure charge and energy of traversing particles .
Due to the long exposure time of AMS-02 of many years the measurement of momentum for protons and ions is limited systematically by the spatial resolution and magnetic field strength of the silicon tracker .
The maximum detectable rigidity for protons is about 1.8 TV , for helium about 3.6 TV .
We investigate the possibility to extend the range of the energy measurement for heavy nuclei ( Z \geq 2 ) with the transition radiation detector ( TRD ) .
The response function of the TRD shows a steep increase in signal from the level of ionization at a Lorentz factor \gamma of about 500 to \gamma \approx 20000 , where the transition radiation signal saturates .
For heavy ions the signal fluctuations in the TRD are sufficiently small to allow an energy measurement with the TRD beyond the limitations of the tracker .
The energy resolution of the TRD is determined and reaches a level of about 20 % for boron ( Z = 5 ) .
After adjusting the operational parameters of the TRD a measurement of boron and carbon could be possible up to 5 TeV/nucleon .