🚀 ‘Incredibly challenging experience’

Hi friends, it’s your Brevard County reporter James Sparvero and for this week’s Space Coast & Beyond newsletter, I thought we’d cover an important story Friday that was largely overshadowed by the spectacular Psyche launch at Kennedy Space Center.

While a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket got a NASA mission to a distant asteroid off the ground in thrilling fashion, Frank Rubio was at the Johnson Space Center in Houston talking about how spending an extra six months on the International Space Station made him a better astronaut.

Rubio unexpectedly spent more than a year on the ISS, a new American record for longest spaceflight, after the Russian spaceship he flew on suffered a leak while docked to the station and extended his crew’s stay. Rubio and two cosmonauts finally landed back on Earth in a replacement capsule last month after 371 consecutive days in space.

In his live-streamed interview Friday, Rubio told reporters he was more efficient with his time on the second half of his mission than the first.

“I was able to kind of do some self-assessment and see what things I had done well, what things I had done poorly and try to improve on those for the next half of the expedition,” he said. “I’m incredibly lucky in the fact that you’re able to take those lessons learned and immediately implement them.”

Rubio also acknowledged the difficulty of breaking the news of the extended mission to his family. He said he was inspired by their resilience and from the support he received from others.

“The community around us was just, gosh, they had so much -- prayers and support. It was really almost overwhelming, how much love and support we’ve received. So from that perspective, it made it incredibly easy,” he said.

When answering questions, Rubio also touched on his own resilience through the adversity.

“You have to make a conscious decision to say, ‘Hey this is a mission. I’ve got to focus on that.’ I kind of allowed myself a day to feel sad and sorry for myself and then I tried to really make a conscious decision to say, ‘OK, let’s go have a good attitude and let’s just try to do the best job possible,’” Rubio said.

Pending his family’s approval, Rubio said he would like to go to space again. He even told reporters he thinks his year on orbit improved his vision!

“I was pleasantly surprised,” Rubio said. “The glasses that I was most recently using on (the space) station, I found that they were too strong when I got back.”

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👋 Here’s a little bit more about me.

Little did I know when watching Apollo 13 in the third grade that 20 years later, I was destined for a thrilling career as your Space Coast multimedia journalist.

Chemistry and biology weren’t so interesting to me in high school science, but I loved my Earth and Space class (Thanks, Mr. Lang).

Then in 2016, I traded Capitol correspondent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for space correspondent. I’m proud that my first live report at News 6 happened to be the first time SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster on a barge. What seems so routine now was a really big deal that day in our newsroom!

From there, I’ve covered the Commercial Crew program and the return of human spaceflight to Kennedy Space Center (Demo-2 launched on my 33rd birthday!)

Now, as our coverage looks forward to missions to the moon and Mars, I often tell others I have the best job in local news. Because after all I’ve seen so far, I think I would be bored working somewhere else. I even bought a house near the Cape with a great view to the north so I never miss a launch even when I’m not working.

After seven years on the beat, though, I still consider myself a young space reporter and I always look forward to learning something new with every assignment.

Check out some more space stories below, and have a great launch into the rest of your week!