Use the news: Historic space trip

Lesson for grades K-4

SpaceX is a private company building rockets and spacecraft for missions to the International Space Station. It also is pioneering flights for private citizens that are getting a lot of attention. Later this year it will launch a craft into orbit around the Earth that will carry no passengers who are astronauts.

But that’s not the only bit of history it will make. The craft will carry the youngest American ever to go into space, the first cancer survivor and the first with a prosthetic replacement body part. Twentynine-year-old Hayley Arceneaux, a cancer survivor who has the prosthetic limb, will be one of four specially selected passengers aboard the craft when it blasts off, the New York Times newspaper reports.

The flight was made possible by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who bought the “tickets” for the special passengers from SpaceX. Arceneaux was chosen because she is a frontline health-care worker for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Arceneaux was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was 10 and had metal rods inserted into her left leg to replace parts of the bones.

People overcome obstacles in life in many ways.

Activity: In the newspaper or online, find and closely read a story about a person overcoming an obstacle. Use what you read to write a letter to a friend telling how this person’s experience could inspire other people facing obstacles.