Carolyn Porco
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?
Whenever we humans think that we might be approaching something that is vaguely similar to Earth, we get very excited about it. The prospect of something familiar but yet so distant and so strange is a very exciting combination.
Cassini was so profoundly, scientifically successful. It's amazing to me, even, what we were able to do right up until the end.
There's nothing in this world like being the first to discover some fundamental fact of nature. It's profoundly satisfying.
I am uneasy about having scientific exploration depend on profit-making companies.
By the time I finished high school, I knew I wanted to become an astronomer. By the time I finished college, I knew I wanted to be part of the American space program. And that's exactly what I did.
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.
It's so empowering to know the truth and to really understand something.
Boy, when you come to study something, and you come to understand it - you know, even if it's just a little discovery that you make, and you come to understand it on your own, it feels it's like the greatest high. It's like you just have found some incredibly secretive thing about nature.
All the atoms of our bodies will be blown into space in the disintegration of the solar system, to live on forever as mass or energy. That's what we should be teaching our children, not fairy tales about angels and seeing grandma in Heaven.Collection: Children
Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome - and even comforting - than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.Collection: Beauty
We humans, though troubled and warlike, are also the dreams, thinkers, and explorers inhabiting one achingly beautiful planet, yearning for the sublime, and capable of the magnificent.Collection: Beautiful
Being a scientist and staring immensity and eternity in the face every day is as grand and inspiring as it gets.Collection: Faces
The same spiritual fulfillment that people find in religion can be found in science by coming to know, if you will, the mind of God.Collection: Spiritual
There is a powerful recognition that stirs within us when we see our little blue ocean planet in the skies of other worlds. In an instant we can see how small, fragile, and alone we all really are.Collection: Powerful
Cassini is different -- it's a mission of enormous scope and is being conducted in grand style. It is much more sophisticated than Voyager, ... I can't say it's got that flavor of romance, though. Voyager was very romantic. Cassini is spectacular.Collection: Romance
Saturn is the most photogenic planet in the solar system.Collection: Saturn
We had convinced ourselves that conditions wouldn't be right for seeing spokes on the lit side of the rings until about 2007, ... But this finding seems to be telling us that conditions on the dark side of the rings are almost as good right now for seeing spokes.Collection: Dark
Nothing will ever be what the Voyager mission was.Collection: Missions
It's been an adventure just getting out to Saturn, .. Saturn is such an alluring photographic target. It's a joy, really, to be able to take our images and composite them in an artful way, which is one of my cardinal working goals. It's about poetry and beauty and science all mixed together.Collection: Adventure
While I was there, Voyager flew by Saturn. I got involved with a person who was a member of the imaging team and started working on data from Saturn. With all that data coming in, the imaging team didn't have enough hands or scientists to work on all of it.Collection: Team
For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body. This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results.Collection: Heart
Remember, Voyager was just a flyby, Cassini is in orbit. We have the opportunity for monitoring them and their behavior, their comings and goings, how they evolve, when they appear and disappear.Collection: Opportunity
Spokes are one of those Saturn-system phenomena that we are keenly interested in understanding.Collection: Understanding
We have at last glimpsed the surface of the fabled world, Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining in the Solar System today.Collection: Moon