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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carolyn Porco | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Porco | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:28:01.532694+00:00 | kb-cron |
As the Cassini imaging team lead, Porco initiated and planned the capture of a picture of Saturn with the Earth in the distance on July 19, 2013, an image along the lines of the famous Pale Blue Dot photo. The taking of the image was part of a larger concept entitled The Day The Earth Smiled, in which people the world over were invited to celebrate humanity's place in the cosmos and life on Earth by smiling the moment the picture was taken.
=== University positions === Porco served in the faculty of the University of Arizona from 1983 to 2001, achieving tenured professorship in 1991. She taught both graduates and undergraduates and was one of five finalists for the University of Arizona Honors Center Five Star Faculty Award, a campus-wide student-nominated, student-judged award for outstanding undergraduate teaching. Porco is a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and she is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
=== NASA advisor === Porco has been an active participant in guiding the American planetary exploration program through membership on many important NASA advisory committees, including the Solar System Exploration Subcommittee, the Mars Observer Recovery Study Team, and the Solar System Road Map Development Team. In the mid-1990s, she served as the chairperson for a small NASA advisory working group to study and develop future outer Solar System missions and she served as the Vice Chairperson of the Steering Group for the first Solar System Decadal Survey, sponsored by NASA and the National Academy of Sciences.
=== Public speaking ===
Porco speaks frequently on the Cassini mission and planetary exploration in general, and has appeared at renowned conferences such as PopTech 2005 and TED (2007, 2009). She attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium in November 2006. Porco's 2007 TED talk, "The Human Journey," detailed two major areas of discovery made by the Cassini mission: the exploration of the Saturnian moons Titan and Enceladus. In her introductory remarks, Porco explained:
So the journey back to Saturn is really part of, and is also a metaphor for, a much larger human voyage. In describing the environment of Titan, with its molecular nitrogen atmosphere suffused with organic compounds, Porco invited her audience to imagine the scene on the moon's surface:
Stop and think for a minute. Try to imagine what the surface of Titan might look like. It's dark: high noon on Titan is as dark as deep Earth twilight on the Earth. It's cold, it's eerie, it's misty, it might be raining, and you are standing on the shores of Lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner. That is the view that we had of the surface of Titan before we got there with Cassini. And I can tell you that what we have found on Titan, though not the same in detail, is every bit as fascinating as that story is, and for us, for Cassini people, it has been like a Jules Verne adventure come true.
After describing various features discovered on Titan by Cassini, and presenting the historic first photograph of Titan's surface by the Huygens lander, Porco went on to describe Enceladus and the jets of "fine icy particles" which erupt from the moon's southern pole:
...we have arrived at the conclusion that these jets may, they may, be erupting from pockets of liquid water near, under the surface of Enceladus. So we have, possibly, liquid water, organic materials and excess heat. In other words we have possibly stumbled upon the holy grail of modern-day planetary exploration, or in other words an environment that is potentially suitable for living organisms. And I don't think I need to tell you that the discovery of life elsewhere in our Solar system, whether it be on Enceladus or elsewhere, would have enormous cultural and scientific implications. Because if we could demonstrate that genesis had occurred – not once but twice, independently, in our Solar system – then that means by inference it has occurred a staggering number of times throughout our Universe in its 13.7 billion year history. Porco's 2009 TED Talk was "Could a Saturn moon harbor life?". She was a speaker at the 2016 Reason Rally.
=== Television and film === Porco has been a regular CNN guest analyst and consultant on astronomy, has made many radio and television appearances explaining science to the lay audience, including appearances on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, CBS's 60 Minutes, Peter Jennings's The Century, and TV documentaries on planetary exploration such as The Planets on the Discovery Channel and the BBC, A Traveler's Guide to the Planets on the National Geographic Channel, Horizon on the BBC, and a Nova Cassini special on PBS. For the 2003 A&E special on the Voyager mission entitled Cosmic Journey: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message, Porco appeared onscreen and also served as the show's science advisor and animation director. Porco served as an adviser for the 1997 film Contact, which was based on the 1987 novel of the same name by the well-known astronomer Carl Sagan. The actress Jodie Foster portrayed the heroine in the movie, and Sagan reportedly suggested that she use Porco as a real-life model to guide her performance. Porco was also an adviser on the 2009 film Star Trek. The scene in which the Enterprise comes out of warp drive into the atmosphere of Titan, and rises submarine-style out of the haze, with Saturn and the rings in the background, was Porco's suggestion. Porco was a guest on the BBC's Stargazing Live Series 4 in January 2014. She also appeared in The Farthest, a 2017 documentary on the Voyager program.