Carolyn Porco
Carolyn Porco
Carolyn C. Porcois 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 currently in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus...
faces scientist eternity
Being a scientist and staring immensity and eternity in the face every day is as grand and inspiring as it gets,
children comforting age
Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome – and even comforting – than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.
connection forget planet realized tremendous
I'll never forget when I realized there was this connection -- it was tremendous to know something that no one else on the planet knew,
discovered extended hope
After what we've discovered with Cassini, if we don't get an extended mission, then there's no hope for anybody.
conditions diversity living might possibly solar system
However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms.
looking phenomena rings seen since
Since we hadn't ever seen the rings in this kind of detail, we were looking for phenomena we'd never seen before.
ice produces water
Once the water comes out it freezes, and that produces copious amounts of ice particles.
confident exhausted fairly liquid
So we think we have a Yellowstone-type liquid geyser tens of meters deep. We're fairly confident because we have exhausted all the other models.
active
Enceladus is surprisingly warm, internally fractured and active ...
ball evidence far grail hit holy liquid planetary solar somewhere water
As far as I'm concerned, we just hit the ball out of the park. This is the Holy Grail of modern-day planetary exploration, evidence of liquid water somewhere else in the solar system.
closer conducting scientific spent surface time water winner
So, water closer to the surface and more time spent conducting scientific investigations....sounds like a winner to me.
heart surely thrilling
This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results.
ball hit
If we're right, we've just hit the ball right out of the park.
alone mission
If we had done nothing else, these findings alone would have made the Cassini mission worthwhile.