CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – Hayley Arceneaux, who has been battling bone cancer, is a cosmic cake.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced Monday that the 29-year-old medical assistant – a former patient who was hired last spring – will start later this year with a billionaire who uses his purchased spacecraft as a charity fundraiser.
Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space – and beat NASA record holder Sally Ride by more than two years – when she battles it out with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two yet-to-be-chosen contest winners this fall.
She will also be the first to start with a prosthesis. When she was 10, she was in St. Louis. Jude operated on to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left leg bone. She is still lame and occasionally suffers in the leg, but has been cleared by SpaceX for flight. She will serve as medical officer of the crew.
“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 ride along.”
She wants to show her young patients and other cancer survivors that “the air is not even the limit anymore.”
“It’s going to mean so much to these children to see a survivor in space,” she said.
Isaacman announces his space mission Feb. 1 and promises $ 200 million for St. Jude to raise, half of which is his own contribution. As self-appointed commander of the flight, he donated one of the four SpaceX Dragon capsule chairs to St. Jude offered.
Without informing the staff, St. Jude Arceneaux was selected from the ‘scores’ of hospital and fundraising workers who were once patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of the St. John’s Fundraising Organization. Jude, said.
Arceneaux was at home in Memphis, Tennessee, when she received the ‘out of the blue’ call in January to ask if she had St. Jude in space will represent.
Her immediate answer: “Yes! Yes! Please! But first she wanted it from her mother in St. Francisville, Louisiana, let go. (Her father died of kidney cancer in 2018.) After that, she reached out to her brother and sister-in-law, both aviation engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, who ‘reassured me how safe space travel is.’
Arceneaux is a lifelong space lover who embraces adventure and insists that those who know her will not be surprised. She plunged into a bungee swing in New Zealand and rode camels in Morocco. And she loves roller coasters.
Isaacman, who flies fighter jets for a hobby, considers her a perfect fit.
“It’s not all about getting people excited to one day be astronauts, which is definitely cool,” Isaacman, 38, said last week. “It’s also about an inspiring message about what we can achieve here on earth.”
He has two more crew members to choose from, and he plans to announce it in March.
One will be a lottery winner; anyone attending St. Jude donates, is eligible. So far, more than $ 9 million has come in, according to Shadyac. The other seat goes to a business owner who uses Shift4Payments, Isaacman’s Allentown, Pennsylvania, credit card processing business.
Liftoff takes place around October in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with the capsule orbiting the earth for two to four days. He does not disclose the cost.
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