NASA voice Haney dies

By The Associated Press
Published: June 01, 2009

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ALAMOGORDO, N.M. --

Paul Haney, who was known as the "voice of NASA's Mission Control" for his live televised reports during the early years of the space program, died of cancer Thursday. He was 80.

Haney became NASA's information officer in 1958, three months after the space agency was formed and managed information from the Gemini and Apollo flight programs. He pioneered a real-time system of reporting events as they happened in the first manned flight program, Project Mercury.

Haney became the public affairs officer for the Office of Manned Space Flight in 1962. He moved to Houston to what became the Johnson Space Center. At the Mission Control Center, he broadcast live to television viewers and media covering launches and became the "voice of NASA's Mission Control."

Haney retired in 1969. He worked at newspapers in St. Petersburg; Erie, Pa.; Memphis, Tenn.; Charleston, S.C.; Houston and El Paso, Texas, and the Evening Star in Washington, D.C.