In the early 1980s, Carolyn Porco was completing her doctorate in earth and space sciences when she joined the Voyager team as an imaging scientist. As part of that mission, she collaborated with Carl Sagan to plan the much-celebrated 1990 “Pale Blue Dot” image. The same year, Porco was selected to head the 14-member Cassini imaging team. She contributed heavily to preparing for the spacecraft’s 1997 launch, and led the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) throughout the groundbreaking mission, until its end in 2017.
In addition to her leadership of the Cassini imaging team and her contributions to all that mission’s discoveries, Porco’s career as a planetary scientist has made her an expert on planetary rings and on Enceladus. She also has worked extensively in public outreach about science, publishing articles in popular magazines and newspapers, giving TED talks, and more. She is the recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Carl Sagan Medal and the namesake of Asteroid (7231) Porco.
