Humanity has lost an interstellar pioneer.
Ed Stone, who was a project scientist for 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 mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a valued mentor to me personally,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. in NASA’s obituary for Stone, which the agency posted on Tuesday (June 11).
“Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA to places no spacecraft had gone before,” Fox added. “His legacy has had a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community and the world. My condolences to his family and all who loved him. Thank you, Ed, for everything.”
Related: Going Interstellar: Q&A with Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone
Voyager launched twin probes in 1977 on a “grand tour” of the solar system’s giant planets. The two spacecraft made many discoveries in our cosmic backyard – for example, they found intense volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io and ten new moons of Uranus – and then kept flying, into exciting and unexplored areas.
In 2012, Voyager 1 blasted out of the heliosphere, the enormous bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that the Sun blows around itself, becoming the first man-made object to ever reach interstellar space. Traveler 2, which took a different path and moves slightly slower than its partner, followed at the end of 2018.
Both Voyagers remain operational today, studying the exotic environment between our star and the next. Voyager 1 is currently more than 15 billion miles from home, and its twin is about 13 billion miles into the void. Those are approximately 162 and 136 distances between the Earth and the Sun (or astronomical units), respectively.
“It has been an honor and a joy to serve as a Voyager project scientist for 50 years,” Stone said in a NASA statement in October 2022 when he announced his retirement.
“The spacecraft has succeeded beyond expectations and I have cherished the opportunity to work with so many talented and dedicated people on this mission,” he added. “It has been a remarkable journey and I am grateful to everyone around the world who followed Voyager and joined us on this adventure.”
Related: Voyager: 15 Incredible Images of Our Solar System (Gallery)
Stone was born on January 23, 1936 in Knoxville, Iowa, according to NASA’s obituary. His father was a building inspector who loved to show his son how to take things apart and put them back together – and young Ed was an enthusiastic student.
“I was always interested in learning why something is that way and not that way,” Stone said in a 2018 interview, according to NASA’s obituary. “I wanted to understand, measure and observe.”
He studied physics in high school and then went to the University of Chicago for graduate school, where he helped build scientific instruments for spacecraft – still a very young field at this stage.
“The first one he designed rode aboard Discoverer 36, a since-declassified spy satellite that launched in 1961 and took pictures of Earth from space as part of the Corona program,” NASA wrote in the obituary. “Stone’s instrument, which measured the Sun’s energetic particles, helped scientists figure out why solar radiation fogged the film and ultimately improved their understanding of the Van Allen belts, energetic particles trapped in 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, the agency said.
Stone also served as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California — the agency’s main center for robotic planetary exploration — from 1991 to 2001. There were several important milestones along the way, including the landing of NASA’s very first Mars rover, Sojourner. , in 1996 with the Pathfinder mission and the launch of 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 the vice president of Caltech, mentioned in NASA’s obituary.
“Ed’s discoveries have fueled the exploration of previously unseen corners of our solar system and will inspire future generations to reach new frontiers,” Leshin added. “He will be deeply missed and always remembered by the NASA, JPL and Caltech communities and beyond.”
Stone’s colleagues have repeatedly noted his commitment to science education and communication, and his genuine desire to help tell the world about scientific results in a way that is both accurate and engaging.
I can attest to this dedication because I have experienced it firsthand several times. Despite being very busy, Stone was open and available to the media; he took our calls and stayed on after the press conferences to answer more and more of our questions.
And he was unfailingly kind, polite and patient in all these interactions. I didn’t know Ed Stone well, but I could tell he was a good man. And I, like countless others, will miss him.