CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – After beating bone cancer, the figures of Hayley Arceneaux launching into orbit on SpaceX’s first private flight should be a piece of cosmic cake.
St. John’s Children’s Research Hospital Jude announced Monday that the 29-year-old assistant doctor – a former patient hired last spring – will launch later this year with a billionaire who uses his acquired space flight as a charity fundraiser.
Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space – defeating Sally Ride, the NASA record holder for over two years – when he explodes this fall with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two winners of the upcoming competition.
It will also be the first to launch with a prosthesis. When she was 10, she underwent surgery at St. Jude to replace his knee and get a titanium rod in his left thigh bone. She is still limping and occasionally suffers from leg pain, but was eliminated for flight by SpaceX. He will serve as the crew’s medical officer.
“My battle with cancer really prepared me for space travel,” Arceneaux said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It made me hard and I also think it really taught me to expect the unexpected and go for a walk.”
She wants to show her young patients and other cancer survivors that “the sky is no longer even the limit.”
“It will mean so much for these children to see a survivor in space,” she said.
Isaacman announced his space mission on February 1, pledging to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude, half of his contribution. As the self-appointed commander of the flight, he offered St. Jude one of the four DragonX SpaceX capsules.
Without warning staff, St. Jude chose Arceneaux from “dozens” of hospital and fundraising employees who were once patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of the St. Paul fundraising organization. Jude.
Arceneaux was at home in Memphis, Tennessee, when he received the call “out of the blue” in January, asking if he would represent St. Jude in space.
Her immediate response: “Yes! Yes! Please! ”But first she wanted to drive her past her mother in St. Francisville, Louisiana. (Her father died of kidney cancer in 2018.) Then she contacted her brother and sister-in-law, both aerospace engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, which “reassured me how safe space travel is.”
A lifelong space fan who embraces adventure, Arceneaux insists those who know her will not be surprised. He dived into a bungee swing in New Zealand and rode camels in Morocco. And he loves roller coasters.
Isaacman, who flies fighter jets for a hobby, considers it a perfect match.
“Not everything is supposed to make people excited to become astronauts someday, which is definitely great,” Isaacman, 38, said last week. “It’s also supposed to be an inspiring message about what we can accomplish here on Earth.”
He has two more crew members to choose from and plans to reveal them in March.
One will be a lottery winner; anyone who donates to St. Jude this month is eligible. So far, more than $ 9 million has come in, according to Shadyac. The other place will go to a business owner who uses Shift4Payments, the credit card processing company in Isaacman’s Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Liftoff is targeted around October at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with the capsule orbiting Earth for two to four days. It does not disclose the cost.
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