Edward C. Stone, the visionary physicist who dispatched NASA’s Voyager spacecraft to run rings around our solar system’s outer planets and, for the first time, to venture beyond to unravel interstellar mysteries, died on Sunday at his home in Pasadena, Calif.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Susan C. Stone.
Inspired by the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, while he was a college student, Dr. Stone went on to oversee the Voyager missions 20 years later for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which the California Institute of Technology manages for NASA.
Twin spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched separately in the summer of 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Almost five decades later, they are continuing their journeys deep into space and still collecting data.
Persons:
Edward C, NASA’s, Susan C, Stone
Organizations:
Soviet, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, NASA
Locations:
Pasadena , Calif, Cape Canaveral, Fla