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Congratulations to ASD 2024 Agency Honor Award Winners!
2025.06.06
Distinguished Service Medal
667/David T. Leisawitz
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
662/Megan E. Eckart
662/Caroline A. Kilbourne
662/Frederick S. Porter
667/Christopher C. Stark
Early Career Achievement Medal
665/Gregory Mosby
ASD Winners of 2024 Robert H. Goddard Awards
2024.08.01
Congratulations to the ASD Winners of 2024 Robert H. Goddard Awards 665/Jonathan Gardner, 662/Michale Loewenstein (Univ of MD College Park), 660/Kavitha Arur (Univ of MD Baltimore), 660/The Cosmic Origins Science Team (660/Peter Kurczynski, 660/Swara Ravindranath, 660/Ron Gamble (Univ of MD College Park)), 667/Padi Boyd, 665/Jason Glenn, 660/Astrophysics Decadal Survey Planning Team (660/Rob Petre, 667/Aki Roberge, 667/Christopher Stark, 660/Rita Sambruna, 662/Keith Jahoda), 660/GSFC Athena Project Team (660/Rob Petre, 660/Simon Bandler, 662/Andrew Ptak, 662/Kristin Madsen, 662/Richard Kelley), 665/Matthew Greenhouse, 667/Dr. Benjamin Hord (NPP POST-DOC Contract), 665/ Virtually Imaged Phased Array (VIPA) Development Team (665/Karwan Rostem, 665/Gordon Stacey (Cornell Univ), 665/Nicholas Cothard, 665/Alexander Kutyrev (Univ Of MD College Park), 665/Thomas Nikola (Cornell Univ), 665/Edward Wollack, 665/Bugao Zou (Cornell Univ)), 667/Robert Wilson (NPP POST-DOC Contract)
Jane Rigby Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
2024.05.03
Jane Rigby, an astronomer who grew up in Delaware, is the chief scientist of the world’s most powerful telescope. A prolific researcher, Dr. Rigby embodies the American spirit of adventure and wonder.
NIAC Award
2024.01.04
Ken Carpenter (667) and his team have been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive NIAC grant to perform a study for an optical-UV interferometry on the Moon, "A Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer: Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI)".
Astronomy Picture of the Day Honored for Outreach by IAU
2022.06.22
Astronomy Picture of the Day has been honored by the International Astronomical Union in the organization's inaugural round of outreach prizes. The website, created and run by Goddard’s Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff at Michigan Technological University, has served up daily astronomical images for 27 years, is available in 20 languages, and is seen by millions throughout the world. The award will be presented at the IAU General Assembly in Busan, South Korea, in August.
2021 Agency Honor Awards
2022.02.08
NASA announced its 2021 Agency Honor Awards this week. Included are several ASD scientists. Caroline Kilbourne (662) and Joan Centrella (660/retired) have won the Distinguished Service Medal, the Agency’s highest award. Mike Corcoran (662/CUA) has won the Exceptional Public Service Medal. Tom Barclay (667/UMBC) was awarded the Early Career Achievement Medal. Knicole Colon (667), Floyd Stecker (663), Eliahu Dwek (665/retired), and Eleonora Troja (661/UMCP) have won the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. The XRISM Resolve Dewar Leak Investigation Team won a Group Achievement Award. Congratulations to all!
Dr. Knicole Colón Selected as TESS Project Scientist
2022.01.31
Dr. Knicole Colón has been selected as the next Project Scientist for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), effective Monday 2/28/2022. As an exoplanet scientist in Goddard’s Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics since 2017, with broad experience leading exoplanet research programs and supporting NASA missions from SmallSats through flagships, Colón is an outstanding choice to ensure that the TESS mission continues to meet its goals. She is an expert in exoplanet research and photometry from space and ground-based observatories. Her experience will have positive impacts felt far beyond the project, as TESS data continue to be collected, archived, and shared with the community in innovative ways, to maximize the broadest community participation and science legacy of TESS.
Congratulations to the Robert H. Goddard Award Winners from ASD
2022.01.31
Congratulations to ASD staff who were announced this past week as winners of the Robert H. Goddard awards. Individual winners include Knicole Colón for mentoring and Barbara Mattson for outreach. Keith Gendreau was selected for the Award of Merit. The JWST NIRSpec IRS2 Algorithm Team was named a winner of the RHG science award.
EarthShine proposal featured on cover of GSFC's Cutting Edge
2021.01.26
In "Our World as an Exoplanet," Padi Boyd, Emily Wilson, and Alan Smale are featured as they discuss their proposal to use a lunar-surface experiment suite called EarthShine to look at Earth as an exoplanet proxy - a representative of a habitable and inhabited planet we might find orbiting another star.
Robert H. Goddard Award Winners
2020.06.23
Congratulations to all the 660 winners of the Robert H. Goddard awards:
Caroline Kilbourne – Award of Merit
Eli Dwek – Award of Merit
Julie McEnery – Leadership
Elisa Quintana – Leadership, Mentoring (two awards!)
Stephen Rinehart – Leadership
Aki Roberge – Leadership
Josh Schleider – Leadership
Sheila Rahming – Secretarial/Clerical
Petrus Bult – Science
Jeremy Schnittman – Science
Will Zhang – Science
TESS Science Support Center Team – Science Teams
Origins Space Telescope Mission Concept Study Team – Science Teams
LUVOIR Science and Technology Definition Team – Science Teams
First AAS Fellows include ASD Scientists
2020.02.28
The Fellows program of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, was established in 2019 to honor members for their contributions toward the AAS mission of enhancing and sharing humanity's scientific understanding of the universe. The following members of ASD were honored among the first group of AAS Fellows, announced Feb. 25:
Edward Cheng
Alice Harding
Sangeeta Malhotra
Maxim Markevitch
John Mather
William Pence
Tod Strohmayer
Jean Hebb Swank
Kimberly Weaver
Poster Blowout 2019 is in the books!
2019.02.27
Photos from this year's Poster Blowout are available now. Congratulations to everyone, especially this year's winners!
SEEC: New Exoplanet Collaboration Seeks to Answer Age-Old Question: Are We Alone?
2018.10.23
Goddard scientists Avi Mandell and Elisa Quintana are among the scientists participating in the Sellers Exoplanet Environment Collaboration, a cross-disciplinary research effort named after the late Piers Sellers. The collaboration is now funding 16 cross-disciplinary research teams that are working with already-existing analytical tools, such as 3-D general-circulation and stellar-outflow models, to see how they could be adapted or modified to run simulations that would advance exoplanet science. The story runs in Goddard's technology magazine, "Cutting Edge" starting on page 13.
Poster Blowout 2018
2018.02.05
Note from the Director:
I would like to thank the Director’s Science Committee for putting on an amazingly successful event where scientists and engineers across Goddard shared their work and made new contacts. The interdisciplinary interactions were especially exciting and crossed all four science disciplines.
Best,
Colleen
Click the title of this news item or the image below for more images from the poster party.
Congratulations to Charles Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr., David Spergel and the WMAP Science Team for winning the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
2017.12.03
Congratulations to Charles Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr., David Spergel and the WMAP Science Team for winning the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on Dec. 3! The citation reads: “For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies.” The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was founded in 2012 by Yuri Milner to recognize those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. The team also includes:
Chris Barnes,
Olivier Doré,
Joanna Dunkley,
Ben Gold,
Michael Greason,
Mark Halpern,
Robert Hill,
Al Kogut,
Eiichiro Komatsu,
David Larson,
Michele Limon,
Stephan Meyer,
Michael Nolta,
Nils Odegard,
Hiranya Peiris,
Kendrick Smith,
Greg Tucker,
Licia Verde,
Janet Weiland,
Ed Wollack, and
Ned Wright
Congratulations to the many ASD members who were involved in the exciting gravitational wave and electromagnetic counterpart discovery of merging neutron stars, and the subsequent media activity around the discovery!
2017.10.23
Scientists:
Scott Barthelmy - Gamma-ray Coordinates Network system
Eric Burns - Fermi gamma ray burst study
Jordan Camp – GSFC LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) PI
Brad Cenko - Swift PI
Tito Dal Canton - Gravitational wave localization maps; Virgo, joint LIGO/Virgo-Fermi-GBM study
Amy Lien - Swift follow up study
Julie McEnery - Fermi Project Scientist
Frank Marshall - Swift follow up study
Judy Racusin - Fermi gamma ray burst study, Swift follow-up study
Leo Singer - Gravitational wave localization maps, GROWTH follow-up study, joint LIGO/Virgo-Fermi-GBM study
Eleonora Troja - Chandra & HST follow-up, Swift follow-up study
Communications Team:
Elizabeth Ferrara - Fermi social media
Barb Mattson - Traditional & social media coordination
Sara Mitchell - Social media coordination & content creation
Brian Monroe - Animator
Frank Reddy - Cross-organizational coordination & writer for nasa.gov press release
Claire Saravia - Live shots
Amber Straughn - ASD Associate Director
Dewayne Washington - HQ/GSFC coordination
Scott Wiessinger - Video & multimedia
Congratulations to the Astrophysics Science Division scientists who are PIs and Co-Is on the recently announced Astrophysics Missions of Opportunity and Medium-Class Explorer missions!
2017.08.09
- ISS-TAO (Transient Astrophysics Observer on the ISS), a Mission of Opportunity proposal submitted to the 2016 Explorer opportunity, was selected for a Phase A study. ISS-TAO team members include PI Jordan Camp (663), Scott Barthelmy (661), Rob Petre (662), Judy Racusin (661), Brad Cenko (661), Frank Marshall (661), Jeremy Schnittman (663), Andy Ptak (662), and Amy Lien (661), Leo Singer (661), and Tod Strohmeyer (662). ISS-TAO is a wide-field X-ray transient detector aboard the International Space Station that would observe numerous events per year of X-ray transients related to compact objects. The mission’s primary goal is the detection of X-ray counterparts to gravitational waves produced by neutron stars merging with black holes and other neutron stars. Other targets would be supernova shocks, neutron star bursts, and high redshift gamma-ray bursts.
- Rob Petre (662), Andy Ptak (662), Alan Smale (660), and Lynne Valencic (662) are co-Is on Arcus (PI Randall Smith, SAO), selected as a concept study for a Medium-Class Explorer mission. Arcus would study stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies using high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy to characterize the interactions between these objects and the diffuse million-degrees gas that surrounds and permeates them.
- Alan Smale (660) and Terri Brandt (661) are collaborators on COSI-X (PI Steve Boggs/UCB), selected as a concept study for an Explorer Mission of Opportunity. COSI-X is a balloon-borne, wide-field-of-view telescope designed to survey the gamma-ray sky at 0.2-5 MeV, performing high-resolution spectroscopy, wide-field imaging, and polarization measurements. COSI-X would map gamma-rays from antimatter around the Milky Way's center, as well as from newly-formed radioactive elements in the debris of stellar explosions.
Goddard Center Director Remarks on Passing of Neil Gehrels
2017.02.11
"Our center has lost a dear friend and astronomy pioneer, and his spirit will always live on in our work, said Goddard Center Director Chris Scolese. "Those of us who were fortunate to work with Neil know of his unwavering enthusiasm for science and unselfish generosity in mentoring others."
Neil Gehrels Awarded $1M 2017 Dan David Prize
2017.02.10
Neil Gehrels was posthumously awarded the $1 million 2017 Dan David Prize for "being the principal investigator of NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Burst Mission, which has transformed our view of the transient and variable sky in gamma-rays and in X-rays." Neil is one of three laureates announced this year in the field of astronomy. The Dan David Prize is headquartered at Tel Aviv University.
2017 Rossi Prize: Gabriela González and LIGO Scientific Collaboration
2017.01.25
The 2017 Rossi Prize has been awarded to Gabriela González at Louisiana State University and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration for "the first direct detections of gravitational waves, for the discovery of merging black hole binaries, and beginning the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy." The collaboration includes more than 1,000 scientists from more than 90 institutions around the world. ASD members are:
Scott Barthlemy
Jordan Camp
John Cannizzo
Tito Dal Canton
Neil Gehrels
Leo Singer
Science Jamboree event photos
2016.08.04
The 2016 Science Jamboree was a great success! A collection of 50 photos from the event are available now.
NASA Selects Instrument Team to Build Next-Gen Planet Hunter
2016.03.29
Congratulations to GSFC team members Mike McElwain, Qian Gong, and Ravi Kopparapu. NASA has selected a team to build a new, cutting-edge instrument that will detect planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, by measuring the miniscule “wobbling” of stars. The instrument will be the centerpiece of a new partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) called the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research program, or NN-EXPLORE.
Mark Clampin Named Director of the Astrophysics Science Division
2015.11.06
Please welcome Mark Clampin into the key leadership position of Director of the Astrophysics Science Division. Mark came to Goddard in 2003 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Mark has been serving as the James Webb Space Telescope Observatory (JWST) Project Scientist at Goddard since 2003, providing science oversight of the Observatory's design through the initial phases of integration. From 2012 to 2014 he also served as the Chief Technologist of the Cosmic Origins and Physics of the Cosmos Program Offices. During the last year, he participated in the development of the Advanced Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) concept as a Senior Scientist. Mark assumes this position with a broad range of experience covering the scientific, technical and programmatic breadth of the division’s responsibilities. We are delighted he is accepting this new challenge and we look forward to working with him as he leads the outstanding team here in the Astrophysics Science Division.
TESS passes PDR!
2014.09.18
The TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) recently passed their PDR, and confirmation (KDP-C) of the mission is scheduled for Oct 31.
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