Carolyn Porco

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Carolyn Porco (born March 6, 1953 in New York City) is an American planetary scientist known for her work in the exploration of the outer solar system, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She leads the imaging science team on the Cassini mission[1][2][3] currently in orbit around Saturn. She is also an imaging scientist on the New Horizons[4] mission launched to Pluto on January 19, 2006. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus. She has co-authored over 100 scientific papers on subjects ranging from the spectroscopy of Uranus and Neptune, the interstellar medium, the photometry of planetary rings, satellite/ring interactions, computer simulations of planetary rings, the thermal balance of Triton’s polar caps, heat flow in the interior of Jupiter, and a suite of results on the atmosphere, satellites, and rings of Saturn from the Cassini imaging experiment.[5] Porco was responsible for the epitaph and proposal to honor the late renowned planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker by sending his cremains to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998.[6][7] A frequent public speaker, Porco gave the opening speech[8] for Pangea Day, a global broadcast coordinated from 6 cities around the world that took place on May 10, 2008, in which she described the cosmic context for human existence. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; addit

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