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Smith's wife, Diane McGregor, said Tuesday died at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of complications related to myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease. He was 86 years old.
Smith led the NASA team that interpreted images taken by Voyager space probes passing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and then presented the images to the public. He was a retired professor of planetary sciences and astronomy at the University of Arizona and a research scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
At NASA press conferences on Voyager's discoveries after their launch in 1977, Smith was a star. a certain dry spirit. At a press conference showing a multicolored moon of Jupiter called Io, Smith joked: "I've seen pizza more beautiful than that."
A video of the conference aired nationally and his quote was on the front page Ellen Hale, former Associated Press communications director and friend of Smith, said in The People magazine in 1981 that Smith was the tour guide of the nation that showed active volcanoes on Io, violent hurricanes on Jupiter, thousands of others. complex rings around Saturn and other spatial quirks that constituted "a very weird world", as Smith has said, "which surpasses the imagination of science fiction writers."
The Planetary Scientist Carolyn Porco who was working with Smith at NASA called him a "visionary" who pushed for changes in optics on Voyager cameras and hiring scientists with expertise in geology and aerospace. planetary rings.
"Brad was one of the few who had foresight to recognize satellites and, later, the rings of outer planets would be as fascinating as the planets themselves, and the need for a capacity of High-resolution imagery to meet both, "recalled Porco in tribute to Smith on Facebook
Smith is survived by McGregor, his 34-year-old wife, three children, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren children.
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