BREVARD COUNTY, Fla — Crew-6 is now scheduled to launch early morning Monday Feb 27.

The astronauts are once again in the spotlight.

A Brevard County woman will reveal that something she wrote for children is also taking the trip to space. When Adrienne Romberger retired as a fourth-grade teacher, she didn’t miss a beat and began working as a tour guide at the Kennedy Space Center. 

It gave her a chance to continue teaching about our space program, but also focus on the area’s rich space history, a history she soon discovered many people didn’t know about, or passed that knowledge along to the next generations.

“So I thought it would be fun to write a book, illustrate it, to teach young ones to have an appreciation for, and an interest in, how human space travel started in the U.S.,” Romberger said.

“Ticket to Space” was born. Romberger describes it as representing actual events, with a little bit of imagination sprinkled on top.

It follows the adventures of Merc, Jim Gemini, Apollo, STS, Zor and Gus, characters representing the entire American space program.

“Basically wrote the book for my own entertainment, for my grandchildren, who were quite little when I wrote it, hoping someday I could do something with it,” says Romberger.

That day came a year and a half ago when the book got published. Now it’s flying off shelves. Her work is about to soar to heights she never dreamed. Romberger heard about another author’s children’s book going to space.

“I came across this company called ‘Storytime from Space’, a nonprofit organization and they work with NASA and CASIS, and they get the books up there,” she tells us.

Up there to the International Space Station. Two books are brought along on launches each year. Now “Ticket to Space” is getting its own ticket, heading up on Crew-6. Once there, an astronaut will be recorded reading the book.

Back on earth, the video will be edited and put on the Storytime from Space website where teachers can download and present it to their classes for free.

Romberger said her grandmother inspired her to go to space, three years before Alan Shepard made his historic flight in 1961. She said her classmates laughed at her dream, but now, she’s getting the last laugh.

“I still knew my grandma was right. Someday I’d go to space. And in a way, grandma was right, so here we are,” she laughs.

Crew-6, along with Romberger’s book, are set to launch this Monday at 1:45 a.m. from Kennedy Space Center.