CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – After beating bone cancer, Hayley Arceneaux figures moving in orbit on SpaceX’s first private flight should be a piece of cosmic pie.
St. John’s Children’s Research Hospital Jude announced Monday that the 29-year-old medical assistant, a former patient hired last spring, will be launched later this year alongside a billionaire who uses his purchased space flight as a charity fundraiser.
Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space, beating NASA record holder Sally Ride by more than two years, when she collapses this fall with businessman Jared Isaacman and two contest winners yet to win. choose.
She will also be the first to launch herself with a prosthesis. When he was 10, he had surgery in St. Louis. Jude to replace his knee and get a titanium wand on his left thigh bone. He is still lame and occasionally suffers from leg pain, but SpaceX has been allowed to fly. He will serve as a crew physician.
“My battle with cancer really prepared me for space travel,” Arceneaux said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It made me tough and besides, I think it really taught me to look forward to the unexpected and to continue the journey.”
He wants to show his young patients and other cancer survivors that “the sky is no longer the limit.”
“It’s going to mean a lot to these kids to see a survivor in space,” he said.
Isaacman announced his space mission on Feb. 1, pledging to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude, half of his own contribution. As a self-appointed flight commander, he offered one of the four seats in the SpaceX Dragon capsule at St. Jude.
Without alerting staff, St. Jude chose Arceneaux from among the “scores” of hospital and fundraising employees who had once been patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of the fundraising organization. St. Jude.
Arceneaux was at his home in Memphis, Tennessee, when he received a call “out of nowhere” in January to ask if he would represent St. Jude in space.
His immediate response: “Yes! Yes! Please! But first he wanted to pass her by her mother in St. Francisville, Louisiana. (Her father died of kidney cancer in 2018.) She then contacted her brother and sister-in-law, both aerospace engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, who “reassured me how safe they are. space travel “.
A lifelong space fan who embraces adventure, Arceneaux insists that those who know her will not be surprised. He fell on a swing in New Zealand and rode camels in Morocco. And he loves roller coasters.
Isaacman, who flies fighter jets for hobby, considers her perfect.
“It’s not supposed to get everyone excited to be astronauts someday, which is for sure,” Isaacman, 38, said last week. “It’s also supposed to be an inspiring message of what we can achieve here on Earth.”
He has two more crew members to select and plans to reveal them in March.
One will be a winner of the draw; anyone who makes donations to St. Jude is fit this month. So far, more than $ 9 million has been raised, according to Shadyac. The other seat will be for a business owner using Shift4Payments, the credit card processing company of Isaacman’s Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Liftoff heads to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October, with the capsule orbiting Earth in two to four days. Do not disclose the cost.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.