  The retardation spectrometer aSPECT was built to measure the shape of the
proton spectrum in free neutron decay with high precision. This allows us to
determine the antineutrino electron angular correlation coefficient a. We aim
for a precision more than one order of magnitude better than the present best
value, which is Delta_a /a = 5%.
  In a recent beam time performed at the Institut Laue-Langevin during April /
May 2008 we reached a statistical accuracy of about 2% per 24 hours measurement
time. Several systematic effects were investigated experimentally. We expect
the total relative uncertainty to be well below 5%.
