Riccardo Giacconi, very recently retired President of Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), will be awarded the National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush on March 14, according to the White House.

A giant flash of energy from a supermagnetic neutron star thousands of light-years from Earth may shed a whole new light on scientists’ understanding of such mysterious magnetars and of gamma-ray bursts.

Radio telescopes, including major facilities of the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory, have provided data needed to measure the winds encountered by the Huygens spacecraft as it descended through the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan last month — measurements feared lost because of a communication error between Huygens and its mother ship Cassini.

The American Astronomical Society has awarded its prestigious George Van Biesbroeck Prize to Dr Eric Greisen of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico.

A dense globular star cluster near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy holds a buzzing beehive of rapidly-spinning millisecond pulsars, according to astronomers who discovered 21 new pulsars in the cluster using the National Science Foundation’s 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array have discovered jets of plasma blasted from the cores of distant galaxies at speeds within one-tenth of one percent of the speed of light, placing these plasma jets among the fastest objects yet seen in the Universe.