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Dr. Carolyn Porco

Planetary Scientist and Explorer

Dr. Porco is a planetary scientist and explorer. She was the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, and an imaging scientist on the celebrated Voyager mission to the outer solar system in the 1980s. She has co-authored over 130 scientific papers in planetary science. Her research over the past fifty years has ranged from the outer solar system to the interstellar medium. Before Cassini’s arrival at Saturn, her work focused primarily on the planetary rings encircling the giant planets and the interactions between rings and orbiting moons. Once Cassini arrived at Saturn, her team was responsible for many discoveries, including the first sightings of lakes and seas of hydrocarbons on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and geysers on its small, icy moon Enceladus. Dr. Porco was instrumental in the famed Pale Blue Dot picture of Earth taken from the Voyager spacecraft, and was responsible for The Day the Earth Smiled event on July 19, 2013, when another image of the Earth was taken with her cameras at Saturn. In 2012, she was named one the 25 Most Influential People in Space by Time magazine. In 2018, she received National Geographic Society’s inaugural Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Science Media.

Dr. Carolyn Porco
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