Howard Benedict, 77; Reported on Space Program for AP

Howard Benedict, 77, who in a 37-year career with Associated Press covered more than 2,000 missile and rocket launches, including 65 manned flights, from Alan Shepard’s historic ride in 1961 to the 34th shuttle mission in 1990, died of natural causes Monday at his home in Cocoa, Fla.

A native of Sioux City, Iowa, Benedict wrote for the military newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes during the Korean War. After his discharge, he completed his journalism education at Northwestern University. He began working for AP six weeks later.

He became head of the news cooperative’s office in Cape Canaveral in 1959.

As the dean of space writing, Benedict developed terminology to explain the complex field of space travel in everyday English. While NASA referred to “revs” or “revolutions” around the Earth, for instance, Benedict wrote “orbits.” And he introduced the public to such space terms as “retrofire,” “multistage rockets” and “rendezvous,” which referred to two spacecraft meeting in space.

Benedict retired from AP in 1990 to become executive director of the Mercury 7 Foundation, now the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Under his leadership, more than $2 million in college scholarships were awarded to engineering and science students. He retired from the foundation in 2004.