Earlier this year, 29-year-old Hayley Arceneaux (AR-seh-noh) received a phone call that would change her life. She had been chosen to be part of a mission to space called Inspiration4. This fall, the four-person crew will spend three days orbiting Earth inside a capsule made by the company SpaceX. They’ll be the first crew who weren’t trained by NASA or another government agency to circle the planet.
Arceneaux recently answered some questions from Scholastic News about her historic mission into space.
Scholastic News: What was your reaction when you found out you had been chosen to be part of the Inspiration4 crew?
Hayley Arceneaux: I was completely shocked. When I called my mom, I said, “You’re not going to believe this, but it’s true. St. Jude just invited me to go to space!” She was so supportive, and we both knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.
SN: When you were a kid, did you ever imagine you’d go to space?
HA: When I was 9 years old, my family took a trip to the NASA Space Center in Houston. Of course, I immediately wanted to be an astronaut once I saw where they trained. What kid doesn’t?
But just a few months after that, I was diagnosed with bone cancer and went to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital [in Memphis, Tennessee] for treatment. From then on, I always knew I wanted to work at St. Jude. And I never would have thought that I’d be going to space!
SN: You will be the first survivor of pediatric cancer to go to space. What does that mean to you?
HA: I’m excited to be the first survivor of pediatric cancer in space because of the message that sends to cancer survivors and their families. When I was a patient, St. Jude gave me hope, and that’s what I give my patients now as a physician assistant at the institution that saved my life. Now all my patients say they want to be an astronaut when they grow up.
SN: How did your battle with cancer help you prepare for this mission?
HA: I like to think beating cancer made me stronger. It also made me look at each day as a gift and gave me a zest for life. [That’s] the reason I say yes to new opportunities, even if they might seem scary at first.
SN: Why do you think the mission is important for the future of space exploration?
HA: We’ll be traveling deeper into space than any human has gone in 15 years. We’re paving a way to space for people who are not classically trained astronauts or who never would have been able to experience space before. I never would have had this opportunity before. Until now, astronauts had to be physically perfect, and I have a prosthesis in my leg.
We’ll also be conducting experiments to see how travel this deep into space—farther than the International Space Station—impacts our bodies. This will inform planning for future missions as we work to put a human on Mars.