In Memoriam: Dr. Ed Stone, Former NASA JPL Director and Voyager Project Scientist (nasa.gov) 9
Slashdot reader hackertourist shared this announcement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and project scientist of the Voyager mission for 50 years, died on June 9, 2024. He was age 88...
Stone served on nine NASA missions as either principal investigator or a science instrument lead, and on five others as a co-investigator (a key science instrument team member). These roles primarily involved studying energetic ions from the Sun and cosmic rays from the galaxy. He had the distinction of being one of the few scientists involved with both the mission that has come closest to the Sun (NASA's Parker Solar Probe) and the one that has traveled farthest from it (Voyager).
Stone is best known for his work on NASA's longest-running mission, Voyager, whose twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are still exploring deep space today. He served as Voyager's sole project scientist from 1972 until his retirement in 2022. Under Stone's leadership, the mission took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth, on Jupiter's moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus' unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune's moon Triton.
The mission "transformed our understanding of the solar system, and is still providing useful data today," writes hackertourist. (Watch Stone speak in this 2018 video about the Voyager 2 spacecraft.) NASA's announcement also includes stories of Stone's desire to engage the public and his thoughtfulness in considering the true boundary of interstellar space. As director of JPL, Stone was responsible for more than two dozen other missions, including landing NASA's Pathfinder mission with the first Mars rover in 1996. "Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had gone before. His legacy has left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world."
Stone served on nine NASA missions as either principal investigator or a science instrument lead, and on five others as a co-investigator (a key science instrument team member). These roles primarily involved studying energetic ions from the Sun and cosmic rays from the galaxy. He had the distinction of being one of the few scientists involved with both the mission that has come closest to the Sun (NASA's Parker Solar Probe) and the one that has traveled farthest from it (Voyager).
Stone is best known for his work on NASA's longest-running mission, Voyager, whose twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are still exploring deep space today. He served as Voyager's sole project scientist from 1972 until his retirement in 2022. Under Stone's leadership, the mission took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth, on Jupiter's moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus' unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune's moon Triton.
The mission "transformed our understanding of the solar system, and is still providing useful data today," writes hackertourist. (Watch Stone speak in this 2018 video about the Voyager 2 spacecraft.) NASA's announcement also includes stories of Stone's desire to engage the public and his thoughtfulness in considering the true boundary of interstellar space. As director of JPL, Stone was responsible for more than two dozen other missions, including landing NASA's Pathfinder mission with the first Mars rover in 1996. "Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had gone before. His legacy has left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world."
RIP (Score:2)
I truly hope that he was able to be informed that Voyager 2 had been restored to full functionality before he passed away.
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I truly hope that he was able to be informed that Voyager 2 had been restored to full functionality before he passed away.
You mean Voyager 1 [slashdot.org], correct?
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Oops.
Work ethic (Score:2)
Stone retired in 2022, at the age of 86.
The JPL announcement [nasa.gov] has more info on his life.
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The REAL "Mr Science" (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid, planets like Mars were blurry dots of color in Earth-based telescope pictures, and exotic paintings by people like Chesley Bonestell [wikipedia.org]. Mars had vegitation and water-filled canals, and possibly strange animals.
Then came the Mariner probes [wikipedia.org] and we began too see actual images of places like Mars and we could see that the wild imaginations and paintings were wrong... but this was a good thing, for we could actually SEE these planets. Reality might be less fantastic but it was, in many ways, actually more interesting AND the idea that man might actually be able to go to these actual places within our lifetimes became a reality.
Then came the Voyager probes and Dr Ed Stone, and Jim Blinn [wikipedia.org] (and, yeah, Carl Sagan). Dr Stone and his two probes did not just go to Mars and take blurry gray-scale pics, they took a "grand tour" of the solar system giving us amazing color images and data for nearly every planet. Dr Stone held press conferences and explained it all in terms anybody could understand, and Jim Blinn provided the (then) amazing computer graphics to help explain it all. While Sagan was getting famous with his philosophical Cosmos TV shows, Stone (with the assist of Blinn) was providing the solid science. Ed Stone truly changed the way the human race saw the solar system, and indeed the entire universe. After all, once we saw the possibilities within our solar system illustrated by the likes of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and the moons etc, we started realizing all other stars could have a similarly unique and diverse set of planets. I believe Mr Stone to be the most consequential space-related scientists of the 20th century.
Rest in Peace, Mr Stone. Job well done.
Ed Stone at JPL (Score:2)
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JPL and the Space Age (Score:1)