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Carl E. Sagan (1934-1996)

American astronomer, planetologist, biologist, and popularizer of science and space research. He participated in planning and execution of interplanetary missions Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo. He authored many scientific publications of fundamental importance for studies of atmospheres and surfaces of the planets, for cosmogeological history of Earth , and for exobiology. He is the author of the popular science book "Cosmos" and of a highly acclaimed TV series based on it. The author of many other scientific and popular science books (including "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" ) and of several science-fiction novels (including "Contact", on which the acclaimed movie under the same title has been based).

He was a devotee and advocate of a broad international cooperation in space exploration, and one of the founders (in 1980) and President (until his death) of The Planetary Society - the largest world organization of devotees of space exploration. He also strongly advocated the opinion that carrying life from Earth  to other planets is a duty of mankind, and the conquest and colonization by mankind of other planets and extraterrestrial space is the indispensable condition of our survival. He formulated that with an often quoted sentence from "Pale Blue Dot" ) as follows: "All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct". Recipient of many awards - scientific, astronautic (including the Tsiolkovsky Medal) and literary (including the Pulitzer Prize).

There is a Polish trace in his biography - as he writes in "Pale Blue Dot" , his grandfather and grandmother (Polish Jew Leib Gruber and his wife), emigrated in 1904 to the USA from a village Sasow[?] on the river Bug in Galicia (now at the border of Poland and Ukraine).

More information on Sagan can be found in his biography at The Planetary Society site and at the page dedicated to him at the site of the BluePoint company.

Named after Sagan were:

• an asteroid 2709 Sagan,
• the lander and the landing site of the Martian probe Mars Pathfinder [as Sagan Memorial Station].

[ZK]

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