CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – After beating bone cancer, Hayley Arceneaux figures flying into orbit on SpaceX’s first private flight should be a breeze.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced Monday that the 29-year-old physician assistant – a former patient hired last spring – will launch later this year along with a billionaire who uses his purchased spaceflight as a charity.
Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space – beating NASA record holder Sally Ride by more than two years – when she kicks off this fall with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two winners to choose from.
She will also be the first to launch with a prosthesis. When she was 10, she had surgery in St. Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh. She still limps and occasionally suffers from leg pain, but has been approved for flight by SpaceX. She will serve as the crew’s medical officer.
“My battle with cancer has really prepared me for space travel,” Arceneaux said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It made me tough, and then I think it really taught me to expect the unexpected and go for the ride.”
She wants to show her young patients and other cancer survivors that “the sky is not even the limit anymore.”
“It will mean so much to these kids to see a survivor in space,” she said.
Isaacman announced his space mission on Feb. 1 and pledged to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude, half of which was his own contribution. As a self-proclaimed flight commander, he offered one of four SpaceX Dragon capsule seats at St. Jude.
Without warning staff, St. Jude chose Arceneaux from the “scores” of hospital and fundraising employees who had once been patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of the St. Jude fundraising organization.
Arceneaux was at home in Memphis, Tennessee, when she received the “out of the blue” call in January asking if she wanted to represent St. Jude in the space.
Her immediate response: “Yes! Yes! Please! ”But first she wanted to take it 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.”
Arceneaux is a lifelong space fan who embraces adventure and insists those who know her won’t be surprised. She’s dived on a bungee swing in New Zealand and ridden camels in Morocco. And she loves roller coasters.
Isaacman, who flies with fighter jets as a hobby, thinks she is a perfect match.
“People aren’t supposed to get excited about becoming an astronaut one day, which is certainly cool,” Isaacman, 38, said last week. “It should also be about an inspiring message of what we can achieve here on Earth.”
He has yet to select two more crew members and plans to reveal them in March.
One of them will be a winner of the sweepstakes; anyone who donates to St. Jude this month is eligible. According to Shadyac, more than $ 9 million has come in to date. The other seat goes to a business owner using Shift4Payments, Isaacman’s Allentown, Pennsylvania, credit card processing company.
Launch is scheduled for October at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with the capsule orbiting Earth for two to four days. He does not disclose the costs.
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.