Carolyn Porco
Carolyn Porco is the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission presently in orbit around Saturn, a veteran imaging scientist of the 1980 Voyager mission to the outer solar system, and an imaging scientist on the New Horizons mission on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Porco has co-authored over 110 scientific papers and has become a regular public commentator on science, space exploration and the juncture between religion and science. She continues to be active in the presentation of science to the public as the leader of the Cassini Imaging Team. She is the creator/editor of the team’s CICLOPS website where Cassini images are posted and writes the site’s homepage “Captain’s Log” greetings to the public. Porco served as the character consultant for the 1997 film Contact, which was based on the novel by Carl Sagan. In 2008, she was invited by J. J. Abrams, the director/producer of the 2009 release, Star Trek, to join the film’s production crew as a consultant on science and planetary imagery. Porco was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of “50 Stars to Watch”. In 2012, she was chosen as one of TIME’s “Top 25 Most Influential People in Space.”
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