Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame
Enshrined 2011
Peter Smith was born December 2, 1947, in New York and attended the University of California Berkley where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1969. He received a Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the University of Arizona in 1977 and 2009. Dr. Smith began working as a research scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona in 1978. There he has worked on projects providing cameras and optical equipment for NASA space probes for the last 30 years. These projects include the CASSINI probe, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Pathfinder, Beagle 2, and the Japanese MUSES-CNear-earth asteroid mission. In 2003 the Phoenix mission to Mars received NASA approval with Smith as the principal investigator.
