Peter Hollingsworth Smith papers

Peter Smith is the son of Dr. Hugh H. Smith and Mary Royhl Smith; along with brother Robert R. Smith, the family came to Tucson, AZ from New York in 1954. Smith attended school in Tucson graduating from Tucson High School in 1965. His first 2 years of college were at Occidental College in Eagle Rock, CA but in 1967 he transferred to the University of California Berkeley majoring in physics and graduated in 1969. During his senior year he worked with one of the most influential mentors in his career, Dr. Sumner P. Davis, serving as a lab technician in his Spectroscopy laboratory.

Through Davis’s connections, he found a job at the University of Hawaii in the Rocket Spectroscopy Lab. The goal was to send a spectrograph into space on a sounding rocket launched from White Sands Missile Range in NM. The science involved taking spectra of solar prominences in the middle UV that is absorbed in our atmosphere. Several instruments were designed, built, tested and flown in the 5 years that he was employed at UH. This turned out to be a crucial apprenticeship introducing Smith to all aspects of space instrument development.

Returning to Tucson, Smith continued his education at the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center graduating with a master's degree in 1977. During his time there he worked with the Pioneer imaging project analyzing images of Jupiter and its moons. The team was preparing for the encounter with Saturn that would take place in September 1979. Despite having completed the coursework for PhD, Smith took 6 months off to travel to Nepal and India. He wouldn’t complete his doctorate until 2009.

Smith has been employed at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory since 1978, starting as a Research Assistant and progressing step-by-step to a tenured professor. During this period, Smith participated in many of the seminal space missions that have explored the solar system.

During the Pioneer Venus mission in 1978, Smith created models of the energy sources that heat the surface of Venus to 870 degrees. Pioneer Saturn, in 1979, initiated nearly a decade of study of outer-planet atmospheres, particularly for Jupiter and Titan. Mysterious, cloud-enshrouded Titan became the focus for Smith's research which led to observations and mapping of the solid surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994.

Working with Dr. Martin Tomasko, the PI of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) and a second influential mentor, Smith was named the Project Manager responsible for the delivery of the camera to the Huygens Probe Facility in Europe. The mission, launched in 1997, would send the probe into Titan’s atmosphere at high velocity and upon slowing release a parachute to slowly descend to the surface. The mission and DISR operated nearly flawlessly in early 2005 returning the first close-up images of Titan's surface. In addition, a detailed analysis of Titan’s clouds was performed.

In 1993, Smith started his association with the Red Planet after his Imager for Mars Pathfinder camera proposal was accepted by NASA for the Pathfinder mission. As the first lander to reach Mars since the two Viking missions in 1976, there was tremendous public interest as the camera returned the first images from the Martian surface on July 4, 1997. Day-by-day images of the alien landscape explored by the bread-box-sized Sojourner Rover were featured on the front pages of newspapers and on the TV news networks. Since then, Smith has built cameras for the Mars Polar Lander mission that crashed on the Martian surface in December 1999. Later, the 2001 and 2003 Surveyor missions were cancelled because of the loss of Mars Polar Lander, grounding more UA-built cameras.

Despite these setbacks, Smith has continued to associate with Mars missions and is serving on the science team for the Mars Exploration Rovers that landed in January 2004. He also helped build the microscope for Beagle 2, a European lander that also failed to return data upon its arrival to Mars in December 2003. Smith spent nearly two years managing the building of the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera at Ball Aerospace for which Dr. Alfred McEwen of the UA is the Principal Investigator.

In fall 2003, after one and a half years of proposal development, Smith's Phoenix project was selected as the first Scout mission to Mars after a competitive NASA selection process. The mission, considered low cost at $420 million, was led by Smith as PI, he has been fully responsible for all aspects of the mission delegating major portions of the development to the Jet Propulsion Lab and Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft launched August 4, 2007 and landed on the northern polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008. The lander conducted science experiments for 5 months while operated from a secure building provided by the UA. This mission has been an important part of NASA's search for life in our solar system. The Phoenix name recalls the mythological bird that rises from the ashes of his predecessor. The Phoenix mission uses the mothballed 2001 Surveyor lander with rebuilt instruments developed for both that mission and the failed Polar Lander mission.

Although Smith formally retired from the UA in July 2013, he continues working on several projects. He is a co-investigator (originally the Instrument Scientist for the imaging package) on the OSIRIS-Rex mission that operates from the same facility as the Phoenix mission. The mission launched in September 2016 and will encounter the asteroid Bennu in 2019. Samples will be gathered and returned to Earth for analysis in 2023.

Smith started a small business, Space Exploration Instruments, in 2013 that makes imaging systems for small satellites. In addition to making parts, Smith is a co-investigator on the MOXIE instrument that is scheduled to launch to Mars in 2020. Its goal is to chemically convert the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars to oxygen, in preparation for future human missions.

Timeline (created 2018)