Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece and Applied Physics Laboratory/Johns Hopkins University,

NASA Principal Investigator on Cassini and Voyager/Greece's Delegate to European Space Agency

The Space Age began with the launch into orbit of spacecraft Sputnik in 1957, and its US counterpart Explorer 1 in 1958.  Thousands of spacecraft have followed these into Earth orbit over the past 50 years, providing services in telecommunications, weather forecasting, navigation, defense, etc. Several spacecraft were sent to explore the planets of the solar system, and their discoveries have changed our knowledge of the galaxy forever. Finding active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io with Voyager, water geysers on Saturn's Enceladus and methane rain on Titan showed that reality is fascinating and stranger than our imagination.

The speaker has participated in the exploration of the nine planets with NASA and ESA spacecraft and will illustrate and discuss the new findings.