Honeycutt Wins Coveted Von Braun Award

Former Kennedy Space Center Director Jay Honeycutt now is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the giants of 21st-century space flight.

Honeycutt, who served as KSC director from 1995 through 1997, recently won the coveted Dr. Werner von Braun Space Flight Trophy from the National Space Club of Huntsville, Ala, the home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Honeycutt's wife, Peggy, said the award was bestowed during the gala Von Braun Memorial Dinner in Huntsville on Oct. 22. CNN's Miles O'Brien was the master of ceremonies and former astronaut Kevin Chilton, an Air Force General who now is commander of U.S. Strategic Command, was the keynote speaker.

Take a look at the program here: 2008 Von Braun Memorial Dinner.

Established in 1988, the Dr. Werner von Braun Space Flight Trophy is given each year to "an individual or organization that has made great achievements in advancing spaceflight programs, contributing to United States leadership in the field if rocketry and astronautics," club literature says.

The recipients in the past few years include:

++2007: Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation.
++2006, William Gerstenmaier, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Operations.
++2005: Alphonso Diaz, former NASA Associate Administrator for Science and director of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
++2004: Retired Adm. Harold Gehman, who led the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
++2003: Peter Teets, former Undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force.
++2002: Congressman Bud Cramer, an Alabama legislator and key member of the House Science Committee, which oversees NASA.

Honeycutt, a veteran of both U.S. civil and commercial space programs, won the award for his stellar track record in managing and operating large-scale engineering, technical and operational space activities.

He was the director of Shuttle Management and Operations at KSC from 1989 through 1995, a period during which NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the Galileo Jupiter probe, the Ulysses solar observatory, the Magellan Venus radar mapper, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and a string of NASA space science and classified Department of Defense flights.

Following his distinguished career with NASA, Honeycutt became President of Lockheed Martin Space Operations from 1997 through 2004.

Still a resident of Cocoa Beach, Honeycutt now is the president of Odyssey Moon Ventures, the first official contender for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth.

Teams must be at least 90 percent privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012.

After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

"I am extremely pleased and excited to be working on getting us back to the Moon in a sustainable way," Honeycutt said in a recent Odyssey Moon news release.

"I believe the private sector has an important role to play in a permanent lunar program and Odyssey Moon has put together some pretty impressive people and plans to help make this happen. We look forward to working with NASA and other space agencies as both partners and customers in this effort."

Honeycutt began his government career in 1960 as an engineer at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. He began his NASA career in 1966 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as an engineer in Flight Operations for the Apollo Program. He took on increasingly responsible positions at JSC and NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. during the Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz and shuttle programs.

As director of Shuttle Management and Operations, Honeycutt was responsible for technical direction, preflight, launch, landing and worldwide recovery activities for shuttle vehicles. The job involved more than 8,000 employees across NASA and support contractors.

As the sixth director of KSC, he served as the chief executive of the nation's primary spaceport, managing a NASA-contractor work force of about 15,000 as well as operations and maintenance of famed NASA facilities and the center's 140,000 acres.

As President of Lockheed Martin Space Operations, Honeycutt presided over a high-tech engineering and science firm supporting human and robotic space missions, employing over 4,000 people at 10 NASA and NOAA Centers with annual sales in excess of $750 million.

"Jay understands space operations from both commercial and government perspectives and he knows what it takes to get to the Moon," Odyssey Moon Founder Robert Richards said in a news release.

Added Odyssey Moon Science Mission Director and former NASA Science Chief Dr. Alan Stern: "Jay is a consummate space professional with a tremendous track record who knows his stuff."

Odyssey Moon Ventures LLC is a U.S. company with offices in Washington and Cocoa Beach. The company is a multinational partnership of aerospace, financial, science, education, legal and policy interests that have come together to offer commercial lunar business services and products for an anticipated return to the Moon.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge and save the NASA photo of former Kennedy Space Center Director Jay Honeycutt shaking hands in 1997 with former Discovery Flow Director Scott Cilento. Note that Cilento's tie is cut in half -- a Launch Control Center tradition for someone performing a new job for the first time. Cilento was a first-time Flow Director during the campaign to launch STS-82, the second Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. The February 1997 flight was the last one launched during Honeycutt's tenure as KSC Director. The second image is an official KSC portrait of Honeycutt.