Carolyn Porco Quotes

You stop planetary exploration, those people who do that extraordinary work are going to have to go do something else.

The Cassini mission was all about a comprehensive investigation of Saturn and everything in the Saturn system, and it's been a mission that's been done jointly with the Europeans.

We really have only been observing Neptune with big telescopes since shortly before 1989.

Cassini was so profoundly, scientifically successful. It's amazing to me, even, what we were able to do right up until the end.

New Horizons isn't just visiting Pluto; it's visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary exploration - the capstone to our first reconnaissance of the planets of our solar system.

When the Voyager 2 spacecraft sped through the Saturnian system more than a quarter of a century ago, it came within 90,000 kilometers of the moon Enceladus. Over the course of a few hours, its cameras returned a handful of images that confounded planetary scientists for years.

We're in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven't explored it very well.

With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.

It would be impossible in a few words to describe all that we've found with Cassini. No mission has ever gone as deep for as long on a planetary system as rich as Saturn's.

If the Pluto mission was a cat, then it would've been dead long ago because they only get nine lives, and we've had significantly more than nine stoppages and odd twists and turns.

I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.

Our field is very focused on finding Earth 2.0, and anything we can do to narrow the search is helpful.

I expect New Horizons will see more that Hubble cannot see.

It's great that people are interested in Mars.

Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar inspected, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted.

It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

Britain should definitely be part of a Mars mission.

Being able to have a laboratory on Mars, being able to have some sort of sustained human presence on Mars in the future, I think, is critically important for science.

Pascal Lee is a true pioneer of Mars exploration.

From the moment of using rocket devices, a great new era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.

I think that the first men to land on Pluto are going to make some very astonishing discoveries. But I am also sure that they will never go there in rockets. They will have to make the immense trip by some more powerful means - like the anti-gravitational drive.

For the new century, back to the moon, back to the future and this time back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.

I think we know how to do Mars.

The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I'll probably always be interested in this planet - it's my favorite.