Awards

Dr. Caroline A. Kilbourne and Dr. F. Scott Porter are recognized with the 2024 John C. Lindsay Memorial Award in Space Sciences for developing and implementing pioneering low-temperature sensor technology enabling revolutionary modern astrophysical X-ray spectroscopy. The X-ray quantum calorimeter, a completely new way to measure the energies of X-rays with high precision was originally developed at Goddard, and Drs. Kilbourne and Porter have greatly advanced this technology and recently implemented and deployed it in the Resolve X-ray spectrometer, onboard the JAXA/NASA X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission. The mission launched in September 2023 and has already produced spectacular spectra of a multitude of celestial X-ray sources of all types, opening a new window for the exploration of our Universe. For the first time, using Resolve’s spectral resolution that is 25 times higher than previous imaging X-ray spectrometers, astronomers now have a tool for precision chemical and dynamical analysis in the X-ray band that is comparable to what has been available for spectroscopy at longer wavelengths. This capability is already transforming what we know about black holes in our galaxy and throughout the Universe, and the matter that is captured within clusters of galaxies that is heated by gravity to 10’s of million degrees. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission is very much a founding observatory to apply this novel X-ray sensing technology, and the performance is already forming the basis of new, even more capable X-ray observatories that will take the next steps starting in the 2030’s. Without the indefatigable hard work and attention to details of Drs. Kilbourne and Porter, getting this new technology to work in space as promised would not have been possible. Astronomers around the world are now about to enter a new age of discovery in high-energy astrophysics thanks to the pioneering work of these Goddard scientists.

Citation: For outstanding and rapid implementation of the data pipeline and associated tools for the XRISM mission.

660/Astrophysics Decadal Survey Planning Team - Citation: For outstanding leadership in laying the groundwork to enable GSFC to become the lead NASA Center for the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

660/GSFC Athena Project Team - Citation: For outstanding effort in developing a cost-effective plan for a NASA-provided cryocooler for Athena and thereby saving the mission

Tim Kallman and Javier Garcia (662) have been awarded the 2024’s AAD HEAD Innovation Prize! They share the award with Thomas Dauser “for the development of novel models to describe emission in the strong gravity regime from accreting compact objects.”

The top prize in high-energy astrophysics has been awarded to the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) team for the instrument and the revelations it is producing about the physics of neutron stars and their environments.

The HEAD Innovation Prize recognizes the development of foundational, innovative and/or revolutionary instrumentation or software tools that have led to groundbreaking results in high-energy astrophysics. The 2022 Innovation Prize has been awarded to Dr. Keith Arnaud (GSFC and the University of Maryland) “for continuous innovation in developing and maintaining XSPEC, the X-ray spectral fitting package, which has become the world standard for analysis of spectra from X-ray and Gamma-ray missions.”

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