Dan Billow

Dan Billow was born in 1960 in Orange County, California. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1982 in radio and television from California State University in Fullerton and completed a certificate in meteorology from Mississippi State University in 2008.

Billow began his career in 1982 as a news reporter at KRCR-TV in Redding, California. From 1985 to 1987, he worked as a news reporter with KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1987, Billow took a job with WESH-TV in Orlando, Florida, as a news reporter and meteorologist. While there, he covered all space shuttle missions from 1988-2011. He also covered NASA’s Earth and other planetary missions, including Mars landings, spacecraft flights to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Sun, and Earth’s moon. Billow experienced weightlessness in a NASA KC-135 aircraft in 1998, and he even experienced simulated space shuttle landings in a Shuttle Training Aircraft commanded by astronaut Chris Ferguson in 2011.

Billow earned the Society of Professional Journalists Silver Medallion in 2003 and the duPont-Columbia University Award in 2004 for coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, as well as three regional Emmy awards.

Dan retired in 2021, settling in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia with his wife of 41 years, Rebecca. They have three adult children: Alex, Jordan, and Marie.