Former Rep. Giffords’s husband writing kids book

By Judy Kurtz - 02/21/12 08:09 PM ET

Mark Kelly, the retired NASA astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), is embarking on a new out-of-this-world mission as a children’s-book author.

Kelly is penning a tale about a mouse that ventures into space, according to The Associated Press.

The father of two tells the news service that he got the idea for “Mousetronaut: A Partially True Story” about 10 years ago. The inspiration might partly be from some of the rodents that accompanied him on his first space flight.

Kelly said, “We had 18 mice on board as experiments. And 17 of them, as soon as we got into zero gravity, stayed latched on to the side of the cage. But one of them seemed comfortable through the whole mission, like he was enjoying it.”

It’s not Kelly’s first dip into the literary world. The former space explorer, 48, worked with his wife on the injured congresswoman’s November memoir, “Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope.”

In that tome, the couple revealed that Giffords had been undergoing fertility treatments before she was shot in the January 2011 attack that killed six people.

Upon resigning from Congress last month, Giffords said in a letter read on the House floor, “I will recover and I will return.”

Kelly’s illustrated children’s book is set to be released in October.