JPL celebrates Voyager scientist Ed Stone’s 80 years on planet Earth
When NASA launched the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977, its mission was to explore the outer planets and beyond, the mysterious region Voyager project scientist Ed Stone would later refer to as “the space between the stars.”
Today, the craft are more than 10 billion miles away from their home planet — nearly four times farther than Pluto — still collecting and returning valuable data from interstellar space.
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Meanwhile, back on Earth, Stone continues his long tenure on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s La Cañada campus, where he has worked as project scientist for the past 44 years and served as director from 1991 to 2001.
On Monday, Stone’s numerous personal and professional achievements were recognized in a celebration at JPL’s Pickering Auditorium. The event coincided with the scientist’s 80th birthday the preceding Saturday, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 spacecraft’s flyby of Uranus, which took place on Jan. 24, 1986.
Speakers shared their fondest memories of Stone as a scientist, Caltech professor and researcher, JPL director and mentor.
“He is so humble,” said Monday’s host and JPL director of communications Blaine Baggett. “This is someone who is the one and only project scientist who’s led the science of Voyager and taken us for the first time into interstellar space. Yet (while) he doesn’t yearn the limelight, the limelight seeks him out.”
Colleagues speaking in person and in video interviews recalled Stone as a passionate collaborator, unparalleled listener and realist, who in his time as director saw JPL through the lean post-Soviet years when budgets were slashed and missions forced to become smaller, scrappier and more inventive.
During a special video presentation the audience was introduced to students at Edward Stone Middle School, a namesake campus in Stone’s hometown of Burlington, Iowa, whose team name is, appropriately, the Jets.
“Edward Stone is a living legend of a man,” one male student said. “He is kind, he is smart, he is curious — he is everything that makes a great man. Time may move on but the Voyager mission will be remembered, idolized in legend.”
JPL Deputy Director Larry James, presenting a special plaque of recognition, thanked Stone as a visionary who forged the path for science in the 21st century.
“We make history every day here, and it’s really because of the path Ed set us on,” James said.
Monday’s celebration wasn’t the only time the scientist’s accomplishments have been formally recognized. In July 2014, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Astronautical Society in a Washington, D.C., whose past honorees include rocket developer Wernher von Braun and fellow former JPL Director William H. Pickering.
In his remarks, Stone credited his successes to timing, good fortune and good company.
“I’ve really been remarkably lucky, and part of that luck is just having so many outstanding colleagues over the years,” Stone said. “Time after time, I was lucky to have had these kinds of opportunities and that’s something I think could only have happened at Caltech and JPL.”
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
