Jay Barbree

Jay Barbree
Barbree as Master of Ceremonies at the 50th anniversary of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral.
Born	(1933-11-26) November 26, 1933 (age 83) Georgia
Occupation	News broadcaster, reporter, author
Years active	50
Spouse(s)	Jo Barbree
Awards	1995: NASA Award - for being the only journalist to have covered all 100 manned spaceflights.

Jay Barbree (born November 26, 1933) is a correspondent for NBC News, focusing on space travel. Barbree is the only journalist to have covered every manned space mission in the United States, beginning with the first American in space, Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 in 1961, continuing through to the last mission of the Space Shuttle, Atlantis's STS-135 mission in July 2011. Barbree has been present for all 135 space shuttle launches, and every manned launch for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. In total, Barbree has been witness to 166 manned space launches.

Barbree grew up on his family's farm in Early County, Georgia, and entered the United States Air Force in 1950, when he was only 16 years of age. Following the Air Force, Barbree began his broadcast journalism career at WALB in Albany, Georgia where, in 1957, he saw Sputnik's spent booster rocket orbiting in the sky and then wrote radio and TV reports about the Soviet Union's launch of the first artificial satellite.