The Scientific Committee of the Exploration Museum has announced the winners of the Leif Erikson Exploration Awards for the year 2019.
The Leif Erikson Award: Carolyn Porco
For her 35 years of exploration of the outer Solar system, Carolyn Porco is awarded the Leif Erikson Award. As a member of the imaging team for the Voyager project, she took part in the first exploration of the outer solar system. The Voyager spacecrafts explored Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its rings and Voyager 2 is to date the only spacecraft to have explored Uranus and Neptune.
In 1990 she was selected as the leader of the Imaging Team for the Cassini-Huygens mission that successfully placed a spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and deployed the atmospheric Huygens probe to Saturn’s largest satellite Titan.
Caroly Porco is a world known science communicator and has been named one of the 25 most influential people in space by Time magazine.
The Leif Erikson History Award: Ben Feist
For his commitment to digitizing and communicating the achivements of NASA’s Apollo program to a new generation, Ben Feist is awarded the Leif Erikson History Award. Feist developed a new method of organizing and fix audio from space missions, including the Apollo Lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Apollo in Real Time reanimates the Apollo missions with precise historical accuracy, providing a new and compelling way for the world to engage with this wonderful historical material. Feist used his expertise as a member of the crew behind the documentary Apollo 11, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
The Leif Erikson Young Explorer Award: Barbara Zangerl
For her achievements in rock climbing, Barbara “Babsi” Zangerl is awarded the Leif Erikson Young Explorer Award. At only 31 years old, Zangerl is one of the world’s best and most versatile climbers. Inspired by her older brother, she began climbing at age 14. Babsi quickly transitioned to rock climbing and went on to make an ascent of Pura Vida in Magic Wood, the hardest boulder climbed by a female climber at the time. After an injury in 2009, she switched her focus to rope climbing, and began exploring the full spectrum of climbing styles. She became the first woman to complete the famed Alpine Trilogy, and has sent three of El Cap’s hardest big-wall free climbs, including the second free ascent of Magic Mushroom.