ORLANDO, Fla. – A Central Florida photojournalist was among three men honored with a Chronicles Award the Kennedy Space Center on Monday.
Red Huber, who spent 46 years taking iconic photographs at the Orlando Sentinel, was selected along with Bob Granath and Mark Kramer to have their names forever added to the “Chroniclers” wall at the NASA News Center.
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“Together, these three reporters have almost 115 years of experience reporting from Kennedy. Through factual reporting and compelling photographs, they helped make sure that people around the world knew the stories of Mercury, Apollo, Shuttle, and so much more,” Kennedy Space Center Deputy Director Kelvin Manning said.
The inductees joined the 79 other Kennedy Chroniclers whose names hang on the wall in the “Bull Pen,” the room in the NASA News Center where media traditionally gather to research and file their stories during launches.
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Each honoree was nominated by other members of the news media and selected by a panel of NASA officials and current space reporters, according to a news release.
Huber covered the space program for 40 years in Central Florida as a senior staff photojournalist at the Orlando Sentinel.
“I’m so grateful for this honor. I want to thank both the person who nominated me and the Kennedy Space Center ‘Chroniclers’ Committee that thought I was worthy of this recognition,” Huber said.
Huber said his first up-close experience to a rocket launch was with Apollo 15 when he was working part-time as a photo lab technician in 1971 at the St. Petersburg Times, now called the Tampa Bay Times.
“To be able to photograph a moon rocket launch was epic. After that mind-blowing assignment, I was hooked,” he said.
A year later, Huber was hired at the Orlando Sentinel, and as they say, the rest is history. He retired in 2018.
Huber’s name will be on display alongside unforgettable names in journalism like Walter Cronkite and Jules Bergman.
The Chroniclers ceremony is always held at the beginning of May to honor the first U.S. human spaceflight, Mercury-Redstone 3, or Freedom 7, on May 5, 1961. The 15-minute, 28-second flight sent astronaut Alan Shepard into orbit around Earth, ending with a successful splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
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