Carolyn Porco Quotes

We do have, and will continue to have an unquenchable curiosity to understand 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.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

I watched the moon landing as a boy, and I thought that was the most exciting thing ever, going into space, orbiting Earth and exploring other planets. That looked fantastic.

One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

The launch of a space shuttle can still make you weep with amazement and wonder, if you happen to be watching it.

I want to get to the moon. I want to go to Mars.

Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives

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

I like the planets because they are real places that you can go to and send machines to. Faraway astronomy - galactic astronomy and extra-galactic astronomy - is really cool stuff, but to me, it's about destinations.

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.

Voyager's passage through Saturn's inner system exposed diverse moons with dynamic forces at work. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, whose surface remained invisible through its thick, ubiquitous haze, nonetheless teased observers with hints of a possible ocean of liquid hydrocarbons.

We've explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once.

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

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.

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.

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

I agree that we should go back to the moon and on to Mars. We should treat all objects in the solar system, including comets and asteroids, as exploration targets.

Saturn is such an alluring photographic target.

I've always been fascinated with science and exploring our world, from microbes to the solar system.

For me, it was my first cosmic connection, on par with a first kiss. No other planet looks as unworldly or surreal as Saturn. When you see it floating in the eyepiece of your telescope, you feel as if you've uncovered mystery in the cosmos.

The Hubble program has been so fantastically successful. It's more than what anyone expected.

You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the solar system that were at least a little analogous to Pluto.

America's space program has been the envy and inspiration of the world. It has made landmark scientific discoveries that are a lasting legacy of this nation's greatness. It has studied Earth in ways no other nation can match.

I'm looking forward to getting to space, looking back to earth out the copula window. I think all of it is going to be a completely new experience that I can't quite predict.