Primary cosmic-ray elemental spectra have been measured with the balloon-borne Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass ( CREAM ) experiment since 2004 .
The third CREAM payload ( CREAM-III ) flew for 29 days during the 2007-2008 Antarctic season .
Energies of incident particles above 1 TeV are measured with a calorimeter .
Individual elements are clearly separated with a charge resolution of \sim 0.12 e ~ { } ( in charge units ) and \sim 0.14 e ~ { } for protons and helium nuclei , respectively , using two layers of silicon charge detectors .
The measured proton and helium energy spectra at the top of the atmosphere are harder than other existing measurements at a few tens of GeV .
The relative abundance of protons to helium nuclei is 9.53 \pm 0.03 for the range of 1 TeV/n to 63 TeV/n .
The ratio is considerably smaller than other measurements at a few tens of GeV/n .
The spectra become softer above \sim 20 TeV .
However , our statistical uncertainties are large at these energies and more data are needed .