Carolyn Porco has a Caltech PhD in Planetary Sciences. She participated in the Voyager mission as a member of the imaging team from 1984 through the end of the mission, and now is the leader of the Imaging Team on Cassini. She is also an imaging scientist on the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
She has been a member over the years on many NASA advisory committees, including the Mars Observer Recovery Study Team, the Solar System Road Map Development Team, and most recently she served the Vice Chairperson for the Solar System Decadal Survey committee. Carolyn is very active in the public communication of science and the fruits of planetary exploration. She has made many radio and television appearances including appearances on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, CBS' "60 Minutes", and many TV documentaries on planetary exploration. She is a frequent CNN guest analyst and consultant on astronomy. Her popular scientific writings and editorials have been published in places like the London Sunday Times, the Guardian, Astronomy Magazine, Arizona Daily Star, the Boston Herald and Sky and Telescope. She recently penned an editorial for the New York Times on NASA's new direction. She and her staff at CICLOPS are responsible for the processing and artful presentation of all those beautiful Cassini images of Saturn and its rings and moons that have been enjoyed the world over for several years now. She also writes the Imaging Team's website's home page greeting, `The Captain's Log'. In late 1999, she was selected by the Sunday London Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of "50 Stars to Watch".
Carolyn was responsible for the epitaph and proposal to honor the late renowned planetary geologist, Eugene Shoemaker, by sending his “cremains” to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998.
