“I am saddened to hear this news of Ed Stone’s passing, but also grateful to have crossed paths and shared some orbits of the Sun with such a preeminent, impactful, and kind planetary science colleague.
I first encountered Ed at JPL during the Voyager Uranus and Neptune flybys in the 1980s, when I was working as a student for a member of the Voyager Imaging Team. I was immediately impressed by his calm and collegial demeanor during the intense and stressful times around the flybys, as well as his clear and conversational style with the international media spotlight covering Voyager. I was also impressed that he happily tolerated and even sometimes interacted with our small gang of students hanging out in the Imaging Team rooms at JPL so that we could witness the flybys first-hand (there was no internet!)
Later, I had the pleasure of actually getting to know Ed when he provided, over several years, numerous interviews and reviews of material for my book, “The Interstellar Age.” Ed’s cheerful and selfless guidance was critical as I struggled to understand and translate the esoteric concepts of Voyager’s interplanetary and interstellar fields and particles research into common language.
Ed was a consummate scientist, instrument and mission team leader, and public communicator. He was also a great friend of The Planetary Society. He will be greatly missed as a mentor and colleague in our community.”
—Jim Bell, Secretary and Past President of The Planetary Society’s Board of Directors, Professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and Principal Investigator for NASA’s Perseverance rover Mastcam-Z instruments