Humanity has lost an interstellar pioneer.
Ed Stone, who served as project scientist on NASA’s groundbreaking Voyager mission from 1972 to 2022, died on Sunday, June 9, at the age of 88.
“Ed Stone was a pioneer who dared to do great things in space. He was a valued friend to all who knew him, and a valued mentor to me personally,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In NASA’s obituary for Stone published on Tuesday, June 11.
“Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond and sent NASA where no spacecraft had gone before,” Fox added. “His legacy left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world. My condolences go out to his family and everyone who loved him. Thank you for everything, Ed.”
Relating to: Interstellar travel: Q&A with Voyager project scientist Ed Stone
In 1977, Voyager launched twin probes for a “grand tour” of the solar system’s giant planets. The two spacecraft have made many discoveries in our cosmic backyard; for example, he found intense volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io and on Uranus’ 10 new moons. He continued to fly towards exciting and unexplored lands.
In 2012, Voyager 1 broke free from the heliosphere, the giant bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that the sun blows around itself, and became the first human-made object to reach interstellar space. Traveler 2, Taking a different path and moving a little slower than its partner, the company followed suit in late 2018.
Both Voyagers continue to operate today, studying the exotic environment between our star and the next star. Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from home, and its twin is about 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) into the void. This corresponds to approximately 162 and 136 Earth-sun distances (or astronomical units), respectively.
“It has been an honor and pleasure to serve as a Voyager project scientist for 50 years,” Stone told NASA in a statement when he announced his retirement from that mission in October 2022.
“The spacecraft succeeded beyond expectations, and I loved the opportunity to work with so many talented and dedicated people on this mission,” he added. “It has been an extraordinary journey, and I am grateful to everyone around the world who followed Voyager and joined us on this adventure.”
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According to NASA’s obituary, Stone was born on January 23, 1936, in Knoxville, Iowa. His father was a construction supervisor who liked to show his son how to take things apart and put them back together, and young Ed was an eager student.
“I was always interested in learning why something was this way and why it wasn’t that way,” Stone said in a 2018 interview, according to NASA’s obituary. “I wanted to understand, measure and observe.”
He studied physics in middle school, then went to the University of Chicago for graduate school, where he helped build science instruments for spacecraft — still a very young field at this stage.
“The first satellite he designed rode Discoverer 36, a declassified spy satellite launched in 1961 that took photographs of the Earth from space as part of the Corona program,” NASA wrote in its obituary. “Stone’s instrument for measuring the Sun’s energetic particles helped scientists understand why solar radiation fogs the film, ultimately improving their understanding of Van Allen belts, energetic particles trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field.”
Stone became a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1964 and soon began working on NASA missions. Over the years, he served as principal investigator or science instrument leader on nine different agency missions and as co-investigator on five others, according to the agency.
Stone also served as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California—the agency’s leading center for robotic planetary exploration—from 1991 to 2001. This process saw some major milestones, including the landing of NASA’s first Mars rover, Sojourner. with the launch of the Pathfinder mission in 1996 and the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn (a joint effort with the European Space Agency) in 1997.
“Ed will be remembered as an energetic leader and scientist who expanded our knowledge of the universe from the sun to the planets to distant stars and ignited our collective imagination about the mysteries and wonders of deep space,” said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. also vice president of Caltech, he said in NASA’s obituary.
“Ed’s discoveries have accelerated the exploration of previously unseen corners of our solar system and will inspire future generations to reach new frontiers,” Leshin added. “He will be greatly missed and always remembered by the NASA, JPL and Caltech communities and others.”
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Stone’s colleagues have repeatedly expressed his commitment to science education and communication, his genuine desire to help explain scientific results to the world in a way that is both accurate and engaging.
I can attest to this commitment because I have witnessed it firsthand many times. Although a very busy man, Stone was open and accessible to the media; he took our phones and stayed after the press conferences to answer more and more of our questions.
And in all of these interactions he was unfailingly kind, gentle, and patient. I didn’t know Ed Stone very well, but I could tell he was a good guy. And I, like countless others, will miss him.