A 29-year-old child cancer survivor may become one of the youngest people to fly in space as she embarks on a private voyage aboard a SpaceX rocket.
Hayley Arceneaux, a medical assistant at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will join the private Spacecraft Inspiration4 led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who will launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule later this year. Arceneaux’s choice as the “Hope” member of the crew was released today on the Today Show on NBC.
The invitation to join Isaacman’s Inspiration4 team comes from St. Jude, the former treatment center of Arceneaux.
“It came out of the blue,” Arceneaux said of the invitation from St. Louis. Jude. “Actually, they asked if I wanted to go to space. I immediately said, ‘Yes, yes! Put my name down.’
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Arceneaux received her treatment in 2002 (when she was 10 years old) and will be the first person with a prosthetic body part to go into space, according to the New York Times, when she received metal bars to replace parts of bones in her left leg.
Her flight is a new opportunity for different populations to fly into space, as required by NASA’s normal astronaut exclude people with such disabilities. However, private flights like this SpaceX one can open the door for people who do not normally qualify for government flying opportunities.
The Inspiration4 flight is commissioned by Isaacman, a pilot and billionaire founder of payment processing company Shift4Payments. The mission is expected to begin this fall, Said SpaceX.
Isaacman will donate the other three seats; Arceneaux is the first of those announced. A third seat will participate in the fundraising of St. Jude in a contest, and a fourth place comes from the winner of an entrepreneurship competition sponsored by Isaacman’s Shift4Shop.
You can find out how to enter both contests here on the Inspiration4 website.
Arceneaux continues to help patients in the hospital today as a medical assistant. She said that the positive attitude she cultivated during the difficult parts of the treatment would probably also help her to face the challenges of space travel.
‘I really hope to show [childhood cancer patients] that the air is not even the boundary, “Arceneaux said. They can do anything. I never thought I would be able to go into space. You really had to be physically perfect for this mission. This mission is changing things. Becoming a cancer conqueror in space is such an incredible honor. ‘
As things stand, Arceneaux will be the youngest American to fly into space – hitting the first American woman into space. Sally Ride, by two years. (Ride was 31 when she first flew in 1983.) Soviet Union cosmonaut Gherman Titov holds the record for the youngest astronaut, who flew a month of 26 years when he launched in August 1961 aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 2.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.