Carolyn Porco

Carolyn Porco is a planetary scientist known for her work on the celebrated 1980s Voyager mission to the outer solar system and as the imaging team leader on the Cassini mission (1990 to 2017) to Saturn. Along with her team, she was responsible for many discoveries at Saturn, including the first sightings of lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan, geysers of frozen water mist erupting from the small moon Enceladus, and new phenomena in Saturn’s rings and on its moons.

Porco was instrumental in the Voyager ‘Pale Blue Dot’ picture of Earth and was responsible for the July 19, 2013 ‘Day the Earth Smiled’ image and event, when Cassini pointed sunward to image Saturn and its rings, with Earth in the distance. This was the first time a long-distance photo of our planet was taken with the full advance knowledge of the public, who were invited to take part in a moment of reflection and celebration of humanity's place in the cosmos.

Porco has received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere, including selection in 1999 as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century by the London Sunday Times and in 2009 as one of “50 People Who Matter Today” by New Statesman; the Carl Sagan Medal presented by the American Astronomical Society in 2010 for excellence in the communication of science to the public; the inaugural winner of National Geographics’ Eliza Scidmore Award for outstanding scientific story-telling; and named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time magazine in 2012. She was the character consultant on the 1997 film Contact and a consultant on Paramount Pictures’ 2009 feature film reboot of Star Trek.

She is a popular public spokesperson on the Cassini and Voyager missions, space exploration, science, leadership and teamwork. She has spoken at TED twice (2009, 2007) and TEDxBerkeley once (2020).

She was a consultant on the main character, Ellie Arroway, for the Warner Bros movie adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact, and she was the science advisor to the 2009 JJ Abrams’ Paramount Pictures film Star Trek.