Jerry Stone, FBIS, FRAS
Jerry Stone, FBIS, FRAS is a Freelance Space Presenter, the Founder of Spaceflight UK, the Developer of Island Zero, and the President of Mars Society UK. He is a Fellow and Council Member of the British Interplanetary Society, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a Space Ambassador with the National Space Society.
Jerry runs Spaceflight UK, giving presentations on a wide range of topics in astronomy and space exploration across the UK and abroad. He has been a full-time Freelance Space Presenter since 2006, after three decades during which space exploration was an unpaid passion alongside his career in computing. He is a Board Member of Space Renaissance International and Chair of its Space Habitats Committee, a Senior Associate of the Space Studies Institute, the Meetings Organiser and a Council Member of the Federation of Astronomical Societies, and the Programme Secretary and Publicity Officer at Hertford Astronomy Group, his local astronomical society, which meets monthly at the University of Hertfordshire. Read Stone, Jerry — Featured Speaker, ISDC 2026.
In 2013, Jerry established the SPACE Project — Study Project Advancing Colony Engineering — at the British Interplanetary Society to re-examine and update Gerard O’Neill’s 1970s designs for free-flying orbital space habitats, including the 10,000-person Island One concept. The project was written up in two special issues of the BIS journal JBIS. From this work emerged Jerry’s original design, Island Zero — a smaller rotating habitat that could uniquely provide a range of simulated-gravity levels simultaneously, allowing the medical research needed to determine the optimal g-level for larger settlements. Read Island Zero — the SPACE Project and BIS Evening Lecture: Island Zero — A first step in producing large-scale space habitats.
Watch Island Zero — Jerry Stone, Space Stations and the SRICA4 #01: Island Zero — A practical gateway to large-scale space habitats webinar of the 4th Space Renaissance International World Congress.
In 2026, Jerry was a featured speaker at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in Virginia, appearing across the Planetary Defense, Space Ambassadors, and Space Settlement tracks.
Jerry is the author of two books and a consultant on several others. One Small Step, commemorating the Apollo Moon landings, is sold around the world, including at the National Space Centre in Leicester, Jodrell Bank, and Kennedy Space Center; astronomer Patrick Moore described it as “Marvellous.” Find Out — Space Travel, published by DK in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the first crewed Moon landing, introduces younger readers to space exploration.
Jerry has been interviewed about space on TV and radio in the UK, the USA, and Romania, covering missions to the International Space Station for the BBC and Sky News — including Tim Peake’s return to Earth and the death of Neil Armstrong. Read Jerry Stone (Spaceflight UK): Let’s Go to Mars.
In 2004, Jerry founded The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards in conjunction with the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation and the British Interplanetary Society to recognise outstanding achievements in British space activity. Known as “The Arthurs”, the awards have been presented annually since 2005, with Jerry presenting them at the UK Space Conference until 2010. Recent recipients have included our Lord Martin Rees for Lifetime Achievement and Dr Austin Mardon for International Achievement. Read Sir Arthur Clarke Award.
On 18 November 2013, NASA launched the MAVEN spacecraft on a mission to Mars. The probe carries Jerry’s name encoded on a DVD — but the DVD also includes a poem he wrote about humanity’s exploration of the Red Planet. Once MAVEN separated from its booster a little under an hour after launch, Jerry became an interplanetary poet — and remains the only space presenter in the UK who can make that claim.
Between 1980 and 1983, Jerry was a Curator at the Science Museum in London, where he covered the Astronomy, Space, and Exploration collections — including the Apollo 10 Command Module that was flown to the Moon in May 1969. Between 1983 and 2006, he held a sequence of computer-consulting positions at various companies — as Senior Analyst Programmer, Programming Manager, Deputy Manager of Systems & Programming, and Consultant — including a decade from 1995 to 2005 at Northgate Information Solutions. He continued giving around 30 space presentations a year throughout that period, before turning his passion into a full-time profession.
Jerry has spoken about space exploration at the British Science Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Palace of Westminster, the Royal Institution, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the World Science Fiction Convention, Oxford University, the Farnborough Air Show, and Mars Society conferences in Europe and Colorado — as well as at a rock festival.
He is a regular speaker at the British Interplanetary Society, recently delivering Apollo 17 — The Final Moon Landing in the Apollo Programme for the 50th anniversary of the mission, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project: 50 Years On in 2025, and the Fireside Chat: BepiColombo: Europe’s Journey to Mysterious Mercury with the Open University’s Professor David Rothery in 2026.
Jerry attended Comrie House / Woodhouse Grammar School and gave his first space talk there in 1969 at the age of 14. In 1975, he staged his first public exhibition on space exploration. To mark the centenary of powered flight, he organized From the Wright Brothers to the International Space Station — the only event outside the United States to be officially recognized by NASA, attracting around 5,000 visitors. In 2004, he presented an eight-part evening course on Space Exploration at the University of Hertfordshire, and that same year he set up the UK For Aurora campaign to increase public awareness and support for British involvement in the European Space Agency’s long-term Aurora programme — a campaign cited by Lord Sainsbury as a contributing factor in the UK’s £5 million commitment to the programme.
A STEM Science & Engineering Ambassador, Jerry presents space workshops at schools across the UK in which pupils make and launch rockets, explore the solar system, design and build Mars landers, and construct a model International Space Station from toilet rolls, pizza trays, lollipop sticks, and kitchen foil — using astronomy and space exploration to inspire courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Jerry lives in Welwyn, Hertfordshire.
Watch his NSS Space Ambassador sample presentation, Island Zero, A Study of A First Space Settlement.
Visit his LinkedIn profile and NSS Space Ambassador page. Follow him on X.