In this paper a short review of the most challenging problems related to direct measurements of cosmic ray from space is presented. In particular a proposal on a possible future experiment to explore both the above-TeV energy region for antiparticles and the PeV region for nuclei is described. The experiment will adopt a large volume cylindrical shaped calorimeter, surroundedby a superconducting toroidal magnetic system, allowing precise measurements of the momentum of the charged cosmic ray up to few TeV, and excellent particle identification and energy
measurement up to the knee region.