Tombstone for Ed Stone

Edward C. Stone, born on January 23, 1936 and died on June 9, 2024, was director of JPL in Pasadena, California, where he led the historic Voyager mission from the beginning. As recounted in the official press release, Stone was known for his outspoken and consistent leadership and commitment as a popularizer, building public consensus and enthusiasm for space exploration. He was also a professor of physics at Caltech, which last year established a new faculty position, the Stone Professorship, in his honor.

“Ed Stone was a pioneer who dared great things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him and a dear mentor to me personally,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “And he took humanity on a space tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had ever gone before” adds Fox, with a clear quotation of the famous phrase at the opening of the TV series Star Trek. “His legacy has left an enormous 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.” And we can only join in the condolences!

Credits: NASA/JPL/Caltech

Ed Stone became project scientist for the Voyager mission in 1972, five years before launch, and served in that role for a total of 50 years. During that time, he also served as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager mission for the agency. In this 2018 video, he talks about the Voyager 2 spacecraft reaching interstellar space, six years after Voyager 1.

“Ed will be remembered as an energetic leader and scientist who expanded our knowledge of the universe – from the Sun to planets to distant stars – by igniting our collective imaginations about the mysteries and wonders of deep space,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL and vice president of Caltech. “Ed’s discoveries have fueled exploration of never-before-seen corners of our solar system and will inspire future generations to reach new frontiers. He will be greatly missed and always remembered by the NASA, JPL, Caltech communities and beyond.”

Nichelle Nichols (lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek) presents Stone with a plaque on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the Voyager probes, in 2007 – Credits: NASA/JPL/Caltech – Processing: Marco Di Lorenzo

From 1972 until his retirement in 2022, Stone was the project scientist for NASA’s longest-running mission, Voyager. The two Voyager probes took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs only once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. During their journey, the probes revealed the first active extraterrestrial volcanoes on the Jovian satellite Io and an atmosphere rich in organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly past Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus’ unusual tilted magnetic poles and icy geysers erupting from Neptune’s satellite, Triton.

“Becoming a Voyager project scientist was the best decision I made in my life,” Stone said in 2018. “It opened a wonderful door to exploration.”

During Stone’s tenure as director of JPL from 1991 to 2001, the research and development facility managed more than 20 science missions, including the Pathfinder mission, which brought the first rover to the Red Planet, Sojourner, in 1996. The year next saw the launch of the NASA-ESA Cassini/Huygens mission and, again under Stone’s leadership, JPL also developed six missions for planetary exploration, astrophysics, Earth sciences and heliophysics, with the recent launch of the Parker Solar Probe. In short, from the probe that came closest to the Sun to the one that moved furthest away from it, Edward Stone’s name echoes throughout the cosmos!

References: