Carolyn C. Porco (born March 6, 1953) is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.

She was also responsible for the epitaph and proposal to honor the renowned planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker by sending his cremains to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998.

[5][6] A frequent public speaker, Porco has given two popular lectures at TED[7][8] as well as the opening speech for Pangea Day, a May 2008 global broadcast coordinated from six cities around the world, in which she described the cosmic context for human existence.

[9] Porco has also won a number of awards and honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere; for instance, in 2009, New Statesman named her as one of 'The 50 People Who Matter Today.

[15] In the fall of 1983, Porco joined the faculty of the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona; the same year she was made a member of the Voyager Imaging Team.

In the course of the ongoing mission, Porco and her team have discovered seven moons of Saturn: Methone and Pallene,[17] Polydeuces,[18] Daphnis,[19] Anthe,[20] Aegaeon,[21] and a small moonlet in the outer B ring.

[3][4] This confirmation, the first to demonstrate that planetary rings can act like a seismograph in recording oscillatory motions within the host planet, should provide new constraints on the interior structure of Saturn.

)[27] The possibility that these sea-sized features are either completely or partially filled with liquid hydrocarbons is significantly strengthened by subsequent observations by other Cassini instruments.

They first suggested, and provided detailed scientific arguments, that these jets might be geysers erupting from reservoirs of near-surface liquid water under the south pole of the small moon.

Porco speaks frequently on the Cassini mission and planetary exploration in general, and has appeared at renowned conferences such as PopTech 2005[33] and TED (2007, 2009).

[34][35] 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.

[36] 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.

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.

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 has given numerous interviews in print media on subjects ranging from planetary exploration to the conflict between science and religion (for example, Newsweek[40][41] and the journal The Humanist[42]).

[44] She is a supporter of a plan for human spaceflight toward the Moon and Mars, and in an op-ed piece published in The New York Times,[49] she highlighted the benefits of a deep-space-capable heavy launch vehicle for the robotic exploration of the Solar System.

[52] She is also the CEO of Diamond Sky Productions, a small company devoted to the scientific, as well as artful, use of planetary images and computer graphics for the presentation of science to the public.

While her images, which depict the heavenly bodies of the Saturn system with unique precision, serve as tools for the world's leading experts, they also reveal the beauty of the universe in a manner that is an inspiration to one and all.

[67] Quotes of Porco's were used in the production of "The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)", "A Wave of Reason", "Children of Africa (The Story of Us)", and "Onward to the Edge!"