Carter is hardly remembered as a champion of NASA. But he saved the space shuttle program, and his words that have been journeying aboard the Voyager probes for decades.

Carter made few contributions to NASA history, but a key decision helped shape 30 years of U.S. spaceflight. The longest-lived president in United States’ history, Jimmy Carter’s voice will continue to extend “into the cosmos” beyond his death at 100.

NASA and United Airlines have lead tributes from the aerospace industry after it was announced that former President Jimmy Carter had died at the age of 100.