Alyssa Dilsaver Helwig may still be here on Earth, but she’s on top of the world.

She and her family on Thursday headed to Disney World from Kennedy Space Center, following NASA’s successful launch toward the moon. 

“I just sat in this building that I literally have dreamt about since I was seven,” Helwig said.

The Nazareth-area native is a senior engineering manager for Boeing, which was contracted by NASA for the Artemis II mission. She’s been overseeing some 200 engineers in building the rocket that successfully propelled the four-person crew into orbit, beginning their 10-day mission around the moon.

“I can’t talk about it with getting emotional,” Helwig said. “It was the sacrifices my kids, my husband made, for me to follow my dreams. It’s the sacrifices my parents made.”

Growing up in the Nazareth area, Helwig says her parents propelled her to follow her dreams.

From space camps at Kennedy Space Center, starting at age seven, to space book reports on astronauts at Lower Nazareth Elementary.

“I remember Sally Ride and Christa McAuliffe,” she said.

One of her best friends says Helwig made her watch Apollo 13 at just eight years old. Helwig also made a costume based on the movie.

“It was a terrible costume from the nineties,” she said. “My dad actually made my wagon into a space shuttle.”

Helwig spent her years in Nazareth from age three until college, when she went to Penn State. And while initially trying to “space” herself from her galactic dreams, she ultimately majored in mechanical engineering.

“I was like, how do you get a job at NASA?” she said.

That positioned her to later work for Boeing. And one day, the chief engineer over all of Boeing exploration systems was tasked with finding someone to take on the Space Launch System.

“So, on the Artemis program in New Orleans,” she said. “Which was definitely not on my bingo card.”

Helwig now lives in New Orleans with her family. She still dreams of one day finding herself in space.

“My mom always thought that would change after I had kids,” she said. “But it, it hasn’t changed anything.”

To follow the mission in real time, you can go visit the Artemis Real-time Orbit Website here.