Related MediaFeb 23, 2021 09:58:30 IST
After hitting bone cancer, Hayley Arceneaux ‘s figures moving into orbit on SpaceX’ s first private flight should be a piece of cosmic cake. St Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced on Monday that the 29-year-old physician assistant – an elderly patient hired last spring – will launch later this year along with a billionaire who is use the purchased space light as a charity fundraiser. Arceneaux is set to become the youngest American in space – defeating NASA astronaut Sally Ride by more than two years – when she exploded this fall with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two others. still won a competition.
Hayley Arceneaux is set to become the youngest American in space when she enters orbit on SpaceX’s first private flight. Image credit: Mike Brown / American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital via AP
She is also the first to launch with a prosthesis. When she was 10, she underwent surgery at St. Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left bone. She still limpes and suffers from occasional leg pain, but was cleared for flight by SpaceX. She will be the medical officer for the team.
“My battle with cancer prepared me a lot for space travel,” said Arceneaux in an interview with Related Media. “It made me sad, and then also I think it taught me to anticipate the unexpected and to go on the journey.”
She wants to show her young patients and cancer survivors that “the sky is not even lower.”
“This is going to mean so much to those children to see a survivor of space,” she said.
Isaacman announced his space mission on Feb. 1, promising to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude, half of that donation. As the self-employed commander of the flight, he offered one of the four SpaceX Dragon capsule sets to St. Jude.
Without warning staff, St. Jude chose Arceneaux among the “scores” of hospital patients and fundraisers who were once patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of St. Jude’s fundraising group.
Arceneaux was at home in Memphis, Tennessee, when she received the “out of the blue” call in January asking if she would represent St. Jude in space.
She immediately replied: “Yes! There is! Please! “But first she wanted to run past her mother in St. Francisville, Louisiana. (Her father died of kidney cancer in 2018.) Next, she reached out to her brother. and her sister-in-law, both aerospace engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, who “gave me confidence in the safety of space travel.”
As a lifelong adventurer who embraces adventure, Arceneaux urges those who know her not to be surprised. She has fallen on a bungee swing in New Zealand and rides camels in Morocco. And she loves roller-coasters.
Isaacman, who flies fighter jets for recreation, thinks she’s perfectly fit.
“It’s not all about making people excited to be astronauts at some point, which is really cool,” Isaacman, 38, said last week. “It should also be about an inspiring message about what we can achieve here on Earth.”
Two more members of his team are to be chosen, and he plans to announce them in March.
One of them will be the winner of sweepstakes; anyone who donates to St. Jude this month is eligible. To date, more than $ 9 million has been raised, according to Shadyac. The other chair will go to a business owner who uses Shift4Payments, Isaacman’s Allentown, Pennsylvania, a credit card processing company.
Liftoff is centered around Oct. at NASA’s Canadian Space Center, with the capsule orbiting the Earth for two to four days. It does not reflect the cost.