At just 29 years old, Hayley Arceneaux, physician assistant and survivor of childhood bone cancer, will soon become one of the youngest people to fly in the world. space thanks to SpaceX.
Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, will travel this year with SpaceX on the company's first all-civilian mission, dubbed Inspiration4 . The 37-year-old entrepreneur who is also a pilot will command a crew of four christened aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.
The billionaire will donate the remaining three available seats . One has just been assigned to one of the employees of St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis (USA), which treats children free of charge for cancer and other diseases.
The big lucky one is called Hayley Arceneaux . She is a medical assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, the same institution that treated her for bone cancer in 2002 when she was only ten years old. She will also become the first person equipped with prosthetics to go into space, notes the New York Times . Metal rods replace certain parts of his left tibia-fibula.
Private flights such as those offered by SpaceX can now offer the possibility to people with disabilities to be able to fly into space. We should also remember that Philippe Croizon, a disabled athlete, could also join a Crew Dragon capsule soon thanks to Elon Musk.
“ I really hope to show [childhood cancer patients] that the sky isn’t even the limit ” , said the young woman. “ They can do anything. I never thought I could go to space. Until now, you really had to be on top physically. This mission changes things ” .
Finally, Hayley Arceneaux will also be the youngest American to fly in space, blowing the record to astronaut Sally Ride, who was only 31 years old for her first flight in 1983. The cosmonaut of the Soviet Union, Gherman Titov, for his part still holds the record for youngest space traveler. The latter was not yet 26 when he embarked on the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 2 in August 1961.
Recall that a second seat will be awarded to a member of the public via a fundraising raffle. In addition, the billionaire himself pledged to give 100 million dollars of his personal fortune to the structure. To learn more, visit the Inspiration4 website.
For this mission, SpaceX will use its "Resilience" capsule (seen above), currently docked to the ISS, which just broke a 47-year-old record. The spacecraft will lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will take about two to four days to go around the Earth, then go down to land at sea. You have understood, there is no question of joining the ISS yet.
