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The Swift team wins the Rossi prize of 2007 from he American Astronomical Society

This year's Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) was awarded to "Neil Gehrels and the team of scientists working on NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer mission". The prize is the top award given each year by the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the AAS.

Swift is a NASA-led international collaboration project. Contributing team members from Japan include ISAS/JAXA, the University of Tokyo, Saitama University and Tokyo Institute of Technology. The mission is dedicated to explore one of the biggest mystery in the universe, the Gamma-ray burst. The phenomena is the largest explosion apart from the big-bang. It emerges almost daily, casting a flash of gamma-rays with very short intervals, ranging from less than a second to a few minutes, from billions of light-years away.

Since its successful launch on November 2005, the Swift mission has located and automatically tracked more than 200 bursts, providing lots of new findings about the phenomena, using the X-ray and optical telescope onboard the satellite.

March 5, 2007