Carolyn Porco Quotes

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.

Cassini was an international undertaking, led by NASA and the European Space Agency and designed to be, in every dimension, a dramatic advance over Voyager. At the size of a school bus, it was bigger than Voyager and outfitted with the most sophisticated scientific instruments ever carried into the outer solar system.

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.

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.

As a planetary system, Saturn holds the greatest promise for answering questions that have a far broader scientific reach than Saturn itself.

Pluto is the new Mars.

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.

I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.

The universe is hilarious! Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!

The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe.

I grew up in this business... A lot of my life has been centered around this question about how NASA is helping us to understand our own home planet... and to understand our place in the universe.

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.

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

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

When we explore other planets, we learn a lot about our own.

This is what the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) represents. Experimental, explorational science. Learning about Mars as a new world. Discovering new things that will tell us about the history of our solar system, help reveal the secrets of life, and continue blazing the trail that may someday be traveled by the rest of us.

Just speaking for myself, I think the return of people to the Moon has a lot to offer for understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial worlds; so would the exploration of near-Earth asteroids by people.

We were very surprised to find out that Pluto is still geologically alive. It has upended our ideas of how planetary geophysics works.

Saturn itself is a giant planet, and there's much to be gained by investigating its meteorology and studying its magnetic field.

The geysering on Enceladus is the most astonishing phenomenon we have in our solar system.

There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.

The questions that we scientist have about Saturn's rings are the questions that an ordinary person might be moved to ask when first seeing them, you know. What caused them? How did they get there? How long have they been around? How long are they going to last?

Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.

Personally, I've got bigger hopes for NASA. I will stipulate it should keep putting telescopes in space so we can figure out where we fit in the universe, and it should also keep building those little robots that can and do.