On a visit to The Colbert Report in 2013, the eponymous host asked NASA scientist Ed Stone if he ever got annoyed that the agency’s astronauts received all the parades and fanfare, while researchers toiled behind the scenes.
“No,” Stone responded, “we’re having too much fun.”
Indeed, Stone served as the head scientist for the space agency’s Voyager mission, which sent two spacecraft on humanity’s longest, farthest, and still ongoing exploration endeavor, for half a century, from 1972 until 2022. This mission beamed back astonishing and never-before-seen views of our solar system. It was also the first mission to fly by all four mysterious outer planets, the first to discover many moons around each of these planets, the first to find active volcanoes on another world, and much more. Eventually, both Voyager craft became the first to leave our cosmic neighborhood, entering the realm between the stars.
The legendary researcher died at age 88 on June 9, 2024. But his inspired vision, to both scientists and children looking up from our perch in the Milky Way galaxy, is immortal.
“He will forever be an inspiration to all who #DareMightyThings,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which runs the interstellar mission, wrote online.
NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.
Stone realized that Voyager’s discoveries needed to reach the millions beyond the gates of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, rather than sitting in a room as scientists slowly dissected the findings. The space agency would receive new imagery in the afternoon, from the likes of Jupiter or Neptune, and Voyager’s science team would rapidly discuss, and choose, the best discoveries to present to a curious public.
“Dr. Stone, you are my hero, too.”
“The scientists would then hone their presentations that evening and even overnight — with Stone often pressing them to come up with analogies that would make the material more approachable for a lay audience — while a graphics team worked on putting together supporting images,” NASA explained in a statement.
This changed lives.
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Credit: NASA
“RIP Ed Stone, long-time leader of the Voyager mission. I learned so much from him during the Neptune encounter: both how to maximize science and how to share science with the world,” Heidi B. Hammel, a NASA planetary astronomer and award-winning science communicator, wrote on the website X (formerly Twitter). Hammel, who helped Voyager 2 capture the first views of Neptune in 1989, now researches the origins of life as a leading scientist on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope mission.
Hiro Ono, today a NASA roboticist, shared online that Voyager 2’s journey past Neptune stoked his deep interest in exploring the cosmos. “I was 6 years old when Voyager 2 encountered Neptune,” Hiro emailed Stone in 2018. “Since then, my dream has been to build a spacecraft like Voyager. 24 years later, I proudly joined JPL. Now I am working on Mars 2020 Rover and Europa Lander. Every day is so exciting.”
“Voyager 2 is my hero who showed me the way,” Ono added. “Dr. Stone, you are my hero, too. Thank you very much.”
Stone, a busy project scientist leading the agency’s confirmation that Voyager 2 had made the grand leap into interstellar space, found time to respond:
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Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
The year after journeying to Neptune, the Voyager team made plans to capture an unprecedented “family portrait” of the planets, including Earth, at a time when Voyager was some 4 billion miles away. “This is not just the first time, but perhaps the only time for decades that we’ll be able to take a picture of the planets from outside the solar system,” Stone said at the time.
Credit: NASA
Today, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles away, and Voyager 2 well over 12 billion miles away. They will eventually run out of nuclear power — perhaps in the mid-2030s — but the mission will continue on as our “silent ambassador” in the cosmos, Stone told Colbert. Both Voyagers carry a 12-inch protected record, containing the diverse sounds and images of Earth.
Whether or not anyone ever listens, the Stone-led mission will have a long-lived legacy, well beyond our solar system.
“These two spacecraft now will be in orbit around the center of our galaxy for billions of years,” he said.
