🚀Go Falcon Heavy, Go Europa Clipper!

Good morning, friends. It’s your Space Coast correspondent James Sparvero writing to you minutes away from watching our first launch after the hurricane and it’s a big one, literally.

The Kennedy Space Center reopened over the weekend, setting the stage for the launch of NASA’s largest spacecraft ever going to another planet.

You can watch live at 12:06 p.m. as a powerful Falcon Heavy rocket plans to launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft on a 5.5-year journey to one of Jupiter’s moon that could be habitable. NASA’s wondering if an ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa could have all the characteristics to support life.

And fun fact, today’s launch would be one year since SpaceX launched another interplanetary mission for NASA on a Falcon Heavy. The Psyche spacecraft is still headed for the asteroid belt to study the origins of the solar system. It should get to its destination several months before Europa Clipper gets to Jupiter in 2030!

Today’s mission has a cost of more than $5 billion and follows NASA’s Juno, Galileo and Voyager spacecrafts that have all explored our solar system’s largest planets and its moons.

Enjoy the launch, and I hope you all fared well during the storm!

📧 Have any topics you’d like to discuss? Send me an email here.

👋 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 eight 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.

Have a great launch into the rest of your week!