Bradford A. Smith

Bradford Adelbert Smith (September 22, 1931 – July 3, 2018) was an American astronomer who led the imaging team for NASA's Voyager missions and made multiple contributions to planetary astronomy and astronomical imaging techniques. He was instrumental in capturing images of the outer planets and their moons during the Voyager encounters and was the first person to directly image a protoplanetary disk around another star.

Early life and education

Bradford Adelbert Smith was born on 22 September 1931, the eldest of three sons of Percival and Mary Smith, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent his childhood in Winchester, where his ancestors were farmers. Percival Smith had a leather tanning business, and young Bradford became interested in chemistry helping his father; his interest in bombs led to the FBI visit. He was also interested in astronomy, and often visited the Harvard College Observatory, but decided to study chemistry. He got his BSc (1954) in chemical engineering from Northeastern University and then joined the army, where he served as an astronomer at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. He was assigned as a liaison to Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto.

Career

Smith's first astronomical project involved collaborating with Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory on a search for potential natural satellites of the Moon during the November 1956 lunar eclipse. Smith left the army after two years and followed Tombaugh to New Mexico State University (NMSU), where he helped to establish a "systematic, ground-based telescopic imaging of the planets" in 1958, designed to support NASA's emerging planetary missions.

The other side of planetary exploration is that the romance is lost. Objects like Halley's comet have a romantic mystique. You see them up close and they still have scientific interest, but they lose their mystery. Poor Halley has joined the ranks of being just another celestial body instead of a phenomenon. — Bradford Smith after the Vega mission to Halley's Comet He worked on NASA's missions without a PhD,

Smith was the leader of the imaging team for the Voyager program to outer solar system from 1972 to 1989. The Voyager missions provided first close-up views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, along with their complex systems of moons and rings. Under Smith's direction, the imaging team documented multiple discoveries, including active volcanism on Io, the complex structure of Saturn's rings, and the diverse geology of the outer planet moons. Smith became the public face of these discoveries, serving as a spokesperson. Smith advocated for modifications to the Voyager camera systems to increase its focal length to obtain better images of planetary rings and moons, recognizing that these bodies might prove as scientifically interesting as the planets themselves. He also expanded the imaging team to include experts in geology and planetary rings, as well as scientists from France and USSR (André Brahic and Alexander Basilevsky). He invited several women, including Carolyn Porco, to the team; Porco later served as Cassini's imaging lead.

The New York Times obituary described his role in Voyager program as:

Smith retired in 1991 and moved to Hawaii, where he worked at the University of Hawaii. In 2001 he moved to Santa Fe, where he worked in wild bird rehabilitation center.

Recognition and honors

Smith received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal four times in recognition of his contributions to planetary science. Asteroid 8553 was named "Bradsmith" in his honor.

Selected publications Books

Articles