NASA will honor three veteran space chroniclers who have excelled at sharing U.S. space exploration news from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Brass strips engraved with each awardee’s name will be added to “The Chroniclers” wall in the Kennedy Space Center Press Site during a ceremony at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 4, 2018.
The honorees, each of whom covered the U.S. space program from Kennedy for 10 years or more and are no longer working full-time in the field, were selected by a committee of working media, and current and former representatives of NASA Kennedy’s Office of Communication, March 21.
They are:
- Jay Barbree, veteran NBC News correspondent and only member of the media to have witnessed every NASA crewed launch at Kennedy Space Center, from Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission in 1961, to the final liftoff (and landing) of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-135 in 2011. Barbree retired from NBC News in 2017 in his 60th year with the network stationed at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy.
- Craig Covault, writer and reporter with Aviation Week & Space Technology who authored an estimated 4,000 news and feature stories on space and aeronautics during his 48-year career. Covault covered some 100 space shuttle launches and missions. He was considered for NASA’s journalist in space initiative during the Space Shuttle Program.
- George Diller, a 37-year veteran of NASA Public Affairs at Kennedy known by many as “The Voice of Kennedy Launch Control.” Among his many missions, Diller is most proud of providing commentary for the space shuttle launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, and all five of its servicing missions. Diller retired in 2017 after his final on-air launch commentary in April for the Orbital ATK’s seventh commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station.
The award ceremony falls one day prior to the 57th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic flight as America’s first human in space. Coincidentally, it was Shepard from whom the first Chronicler honorees received their award certificates in 1995.
The recipients join a distinguished list of broadcasters, journalists, authors, contractor public relations representatives and NASA public affairs officers honored as Kennedy “Chroniclers,” including Walter Cronkite of CBS News, ABC News’ Jules Bergman and two-time Pulitzer winner, John Noble Wilford of the New York Times.
For a list of “The Chroniclers” and their bios, see:
Al Feinberg
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
al.feinberg@nasa.gov