Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old medical assistant and former bone cancer patient, will be the youngest American in space later this year when she takes part in the first SpaceX private flight.
The St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where Arceneaux was once a patient and now works, announced Monday that she will start the game with entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and two winners later this year.
Arcenaux will be the first person with a prosthesis in space. When she was 10, she underwent surgery at St Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh. She is still limping and suffering from leg pain, but was 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. “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 no longer even the limit’.
“It’s going to mean so much to these children to see a survivor in space,” she said.
Isaacman announces his space mission on February 1 and promises to raise $ 200 million for St Jude, half of his own contribution. As self-appointed commander of the flight, he offered St Jude one of four SpaceX Dragon capsule seats.
Without informing staff, St Jude Arceneaux selected from the “scores” of hospital and fundraising employees who were once patients and could represent the next generation, said Rick Shadyac, president of the fundraising organization St Jude.
Arceneaux was at home in Memphis when she received the ‘out of the blue’ call in January to ask if she would represent St Jude in space. Her immediate answer: “Yes! Yes! Please! ”
But first she wanted to run it with her mother in St. Francisville, Louisiana. She then reached out to her brother and sister-in-law, both aerospace engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, who “reassured me how safe space travel is.”
A lifelong spatial fan, Arceneaux insists those who know her will not be surprised by her new role. She plunged into a bungee swing in New Zealand and rode camels in Morocco. And she likes octopuses. 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. “It’s also about an inspiring message about what we can achieve here on earth.”
He has two more crew members to pick from and plans to announce them in March. One will be a lottery winner; anyone donating to St Jude this month 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 is directed around October at the Kennedy Space Center in Nasa, with the capsule orbiting the earth for two to four days. Isaacman does not say how much the flight will cost him.