Hayley Arceneaux (born December 4, 1991) is a

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is a pediatric treatment and research facility located in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1962, it is a 501(c)(3) designated nonprofit medical corporation which focuses on children's catastrophic diseases, pa ...

physician assistant A physician assistant or physician associate (PA) is a type of Mid-level practitioner, mid-level health care provider. In North America PAs may diagnose illnesses, develop and manage treatment plans, prescribe medications, and may serve as a pri ...

and

commercial astronaut A commercial astronaut is a person who has commanded, piloted, or served as an active crew member of a privately funded spacecraft. This is distinct from an otherwise non-government astronaut, for example Charlie Walker, who flies while represe ...

. She joined billionaire

Jared Isaacman Jared Isaacman (born February 11, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, pilot, philanthropist, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, CEO of Draken International, a private air force provider and Shift4 Payments, a payment processor. As of ...

on SpaceX's first private spaceflight

Inspiration4 Inspiration4 (stylized as Inspirati④n) was a 2021 human spaceflight operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The mission launched the Crew Dragon ''Resilience'' on 16 September 2021 at 00:02:56 UTC from Kennedy Sp ...

, which launched on September 16, 2021, 00:02:56 UTC, and successfully water-landed local-time on Saturday, September 18. Arceneaux became the first human in space with a prosthetic leg bone after surviving

bone cancer A bone tumor is an abnormal growth of tissue in bone, traditionally classified as noncancerous (benign) or cancerous (malignant). Cancerous bone tumors usually originate from a cancer in another part of the body such as from lung, breast, thyro ...

. At age 29, Arceneaux was the youngest American to travel to space, surpassed a few months later by 23 year old Cameron Bess aboard

Blue Origin NS-19 Blue Origin NS-19 was a crewed New Shepard sub-orbital spaceflight mission operated by Blue Origin that launched on 11 December 2021. The flight was scheduled to launch on 9 December 2021, later delayed to 11 December 2021. The mission patch o ...

. Arceneaux remains the youngest American who has been in orbit.

Early life and education

Arceneaux was raised in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Her father, Howard Stanford Arceneaux, died July 5, 2018, at the age of 60 years old. Her brother, Hayden, and sister-in-law, Liz Suttles, are

aerospace engineers Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

. When she was 10 years old, her left knee began to ache. Her doctor thought it was just a sprain, but a few months later, tests revealed she had

osteosarcoma An osteosarcoma (OS) or osteogenic sarcoma (OGS) (or simply bone cancer) is a cancerous tumor in a bone. Specifically, it is an aggressive malignant neoplasm that arises from primitive transformed cells of mesenchymal origin (and thus a sarcoma) a ...

, a type of bone cancer. Her family turned to

for her treatment and care, which included around a dozen rounds of

chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated to chemo and sometimes CTX or CTx) is a type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherap ...

, a limb-preservation surgery with knee replacement and placement of a

titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

rod in her left thigh bone along with associated physical therapy. The experience inspired her to want to work with other cancer patients at St. Jude, which she does as a physician assistant working with

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

and

lymphoma Lymphoma is a group of blood and lymph tumors that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). In current usage the name usually refers to just the cancerous versions rather than all such tumours. Signs and symptoms may include enlar ...

patients. Arceneaux graduated from St. Joseph's Academy in

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...

, and obtained an undergraduate degree in Spanish in 2014. She obtained her

Physician Assistant A physician assistant or physician associate (PA) is a type of Mid-level practitioner, mid-level health care provider. In North America PAs may diagnose illnesses, develop and manage treatment plans, prescribe medications, and may serve as a pri ...

(PA) degree in 2016 from

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

Health in

Shreveport, Louisiana Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population of 393,406 in 2020, is t ...

Personal endeavors

Inspiration4 spaceflight

Arceneaux was described as the chief medical officer onboard

, a

private spaceflight Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Unio ...

funded by billionaire

. She has said she thinks she will be the first

Cajun The Cajuns (; French: ''les Cadjins'' or ''les Cadiens'' ), also known as Louisiana ''Acadians'' (French: ''les Acadiens''), are a Louisiana French ethnicity mainly found in the U.S. state of Louisiana. While Cajuns are usually described as ...

in space. She is the first person to launch with a prosthesis. As part of the training, she climbed

Mount Rainier Mount Rainier (), indigenously known as Tahoma, Tacoma, Tacobet, or təqʷubəʔ, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With a s ...

in Washington with the rest of the Inspiration4 crew. Arceneaux received the call sign "Nova" during training. Arceneaux is featured on the cover of a ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine double issue with the crew of Inspiration4 in August 2021. She is a member of the

Association of Space Explorers The Association of Space Explorers is a non-profit organization with a membership composed of people who have completed at least one Earth orbit in space (above , as defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. It was founded in 1985, ...

Awards

*2003 Louisiana Young Heroes.

Bibliography

*''Wild Ride: A Memoir of I.V. Drips and Rocket Ships'' - by Hayley Arceneaux - 2022 -

References

External links

* SpaceFacts.de
Hayley Arceneaux
: Tourist Biography * {{DEFAULTSORT:Arceneaux, Hayley 1991 births Living people People from Baton Rouge, Louisiana People from Memphis, Tennessee Space tourists Cajun people Inspiration4