Peter Cosgrove

Peter Cosgrove’s photojournalism career spanned almost 50 years, the last eight years spent as a staffer with the Associated Press (AP). His coverage of NASA’s space programs included four Apollo Moon mission crew recoveries at sea.  He was aboard the USS Hornet when the first moonwalkers, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and pilot Michael Collins returned to Earth and were picked up in the Pacific by the aircraft carrier in 1969.

He also covered two of NASA’s greatest tragedies while reporting from Cape Canaveral — the Challenger explosion and the demise of the space shuttle Columbia.

A native of Brooklyn, Cosgrove started in the news business in 1957, shortly after his discharge from the Navy, when he took a job as a telephoto engineer with United Press International (UPI) in New York.

In 1962, he transferred to Cleveland where he covered the hometown parade for John Glenn after the astronaut became the first American to orbit the Earth. Cosgrove then transferred to New Jersey, where he was the wire service’s chief telephoto engineer and a photographer.

He worked for UPI in Miami and Tampa before he was laid off from the wire service in 1991.

He freelanced for the AP in Florida until he was hired as a staffer in the Orlando office in 1997. During his time there, he was meticulous in preparing for any assignment, whether it was covering the Orlando Magic or working on a feature story. He retired in 2005 and passed away in 2019.