Ed Stone was a NASA scientist who led the agency’s pioneering Voyager missions and served as head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 10 years.
· Died: June 9, 2024 (Who else died on June 9?)
· Details of death: Died at the age of 88.
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Ed Stone’s legacy
Born in Knoxville, Iowa, Ed Stone studied physics at Burlington Junior College and went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. His timing was fortuitous, as the U.S. space race against the USSR was just beginning, and the nation was experiencing a surging demand for scientists.
After earning his doctorate, Stone joined the California Institute of Technology staff in 1964, eventually becoming a professor of physics. At Caltech, he ran the Space Radiation Lab and studied cosmic rays. His work caught the attention of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in 1972, he became the project scientist for what would become one of the most important endeavors in science history: the Voyager mission.
Launched in 1977, Voyager aimed to explore the outer planets of the solar system —Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Stone led a team of researchers and engineers in what would become an enduring space mission, providing unprecedented close-up images and data of these distant worlds. Voyager 1 is now the farthest human-made object from Earth, entering interstellar space in 2012. Both Voyager probes are still operating today.
Stone later served as JPL’s director from 1991 to 2001. During his tenure, he oversaw several key space missions, including the Pathfinder, which successfully landed a rover on Mars in 1997 and gathered unprecedented new data from the Red Planet.
Stone’s accolades include the National Medal of Science, NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal, and the Carl Sagan Memorial Award. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and he won the Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2019.
Notable quote
“It’s amazing that the two spacecraft are still working after 40 years. When we launched, the Space Age itself was only 20 years old, so this is an unparalleled journey, and we’re still in the process of discovering what’s out there.” — Interview with space.com, 2018
Tributes to Ed Stone
Full obituary: Los Angeles Times
