Carolyn Porco Quotes

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.

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

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?

NASA has made a difference.

The exploration of space: Be it by humans or robots, based on the best choice for the mission and the most efficient means to return the data and science sought. Most of the time, this will mean we send robots due to cost and danger. But sometimes, we will need the irreplaceable judgment and descriptive abilities of a person on the spot.

I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.

Hubble is unique. Nothing else can do what it can do. Once it's gone, we're going to be paralyzed.

I'd probably go to see Saturn first-thing and see as close to those rings as I can get and see if I can fly by one of them and try and put one of my hands through them.

We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.

The Hubble images far surpassed anything taken by any telescope on Earth.

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

Here we were, the only seven humans in space, repairing a telescope whose only purpose is to enrich the minds of people on planet Earth and increase our understanding of the workings of the universe. I can think of no better peaceful use of space for all humankind.

I will do my best to support science in Korea and space programs in Korea.

It seemed to me that NASA, especially Goddard, was the place where I could carry out the dreams that I had, which were to push forward an experiment that would measure the big bang radiation better than anyone had ever tried before. Therefore, it seemed like the perfect place to go.

People know a planet when they see one, and I think that's a pretty darn good test, in fact, for planethood.

I wanted to be an astronomer until I discovered I'm terrible at math.

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.

There's something cool about being involved in new missions to other planets.

The team at the Space Telescope Science Institute has a demonstrated record of meeting the high-performance challenges of operating the Hubble Space Telescope and preparing for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Hubble made my career.

Scientists normally like to do experiments. You know, they like to mix this with that and see what happens. They like to take this thing and poke it and see how it reacts. In astronomy, we can't do that. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, are so far away that we just look at them, and we have to learn things by looking at them.

Together, NASA and Hubble are opening new vistas on the universe.

I knew I wanted to be a part of NASA in any case, and so I chose my goals in education to be consistent with working at NASA even as, you know, a scientist.