The Next Phase of Martian Exploration: The Search for Life

Speaker:

Peter Smith

10 Feb 2011

8:00 PM

Great Hall, Memorial Union

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Peter Smith is a professor at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and was responsible for the $420 million Phoenix Mars Mission, part of NASA's search for elements of life in our solar system. During the five months of operations, the probe conducted science experiments and relayed more than 25,000 pictures of the Red Planet. Smith has participated in many of NASA's space missions, beginning with the Pioneer Venus mission and later the Pioneer Saturn project. His association with Mars began in 1993 when NASA accepted his camera proposal for the Pathfinder mission. In 1997 the camera returned images from the Martian surface and monitored the forays of the Sojourner Rover. Smith is a recent recipient of the American Geographical Society's prestigious Cullum Geographical Medal and is the first Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science at the University of Arizona. Phi Beta Kappa Lecture and part of the National Affairs Series on Innovation.

Image credit: NASA/Sandra Joseph and John Kechele ---- This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.