(NEW YORK) — Hayley Arceneaux’s dreams of becoming an astronaut were crushed after being diagnosed with pediatric bone cancer at 10 years old, but now she’s set to go to space in the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth.

Now, the 29-year-old St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital physician assistant is set to make history as the youngest American, first pediatric cancer survivor, and person with a prosthesis to go to space as one of the crew members in SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission.

The four-person mission will launch in September in a SpaceX rocket commanded by entrepreneur and part-time pilot Jared Isaacman.

Isaacman donated two seats to the hospital: One for Arceneaux and another that is being raffled to the public as part of a $200 million fundraiser for the hospital.

Arceneaux shared how her battle with cancer as a child prepared her for the mission into orbit and her excitement for the experience ahead.

Arceneaux told co-host Sunny Hostin that she’s “been so excited” and “so ready” for the space mission.

“I’m going to be the youngest American to go to space, but also what I’m really excited about is that I’m going to be the first pediatric cancer survivor to go to space, and the first person with an internal prosthesis,” she said.

During her one-year treatment at St. Jude for bone cancer, Arceneaux had to get surgery to replace her knee and had a metal rod put in her left thigh bone to save her leg.

“I’m really excited to show all these kids going through cancer treatment what they can do too,” Arceneaux said.

Arceneaux’s family trip to NASA’s headquarters when she was 10 years old inspired her to become an astronaut, but she said her hopes came to a halt after being diagnosed with bone cancer just a few months later.

Looking back on when the doctors told her she had cancer, Arceneaux recalled bursting into tears. “I kept saying, ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,’ because at age 10, everyone I had known with cancer had passed away.”

She added that it wasn’t until she was “walking into the doors of St. Jude’s” that she felt hope for survival.

“That year that I spent going through cancer treatment at St. Jude was actually the most important year of my life,” Arceneaux said. “It definitely made me who I am, and made me tough because of it, and I think in a way it prepared me to go to space.”

While Arceneaux beat cancer, she thought that going to space was a wish she’d never be able to fulfill. That is, until she received an “out of the blue” phone call in January from St. Jude.

“I was absolutely shocked when they asked if I wanted to go with them to space,” she said. “Immediately, I said yes, and then thought for a second. I was like, ‘Well let me check with my mom.'”

“Getting to be this first all-civilian mission to space, and what this means for everyone coming after us, it’s incredibly exciting to be part of,” she said.

Arceneaux, who’s currently an astronaut-in-training and will become a certified commercial astronaut after completing her mission, will be orbiting Earth for three to four days.

During her training, she said she’s learned the ins and outs of SpaceX’s spacecraft as well as centrifuge training and hypoxia training. Next week, the crew will learn about water survival.

Since Arceneaux is a physician assistant, she’s the designated medical officer on the mission and goes through additional training.

While they are in orbit, “going deeper, higher into space” than any space crew has in 15 years, Arceneaux and the crew will do research on the radiation profile that is seen in that level of space.

“We’re gonna be doing some cognition tests while we’re up there, taking some blood and all kinds of samples to learn any radiation exposure effects, and also testing the microbiome as we’re in this close capsule, all of us breathing the same air, seeing really what the bacteria does on our skin,” she said on “The View.”

On July 11, billionaire Sir Richard Branson flew to the lower edge of space and back to planet Earth in the first fully crewed flight from his private space tourism firm Virgin Galactic. Another billionaire, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is set to launch to the edge of space on Tuesday with the first crewed flight from his private space-faring firm Blue Origin.

Arceneaux weighed in on the billionaires blasting off into space.

“It’s so exciting that more and more people are getting to experience space,” Arceneaux said, adding that her Inspiration4 mission crew was together to watch Branson and plan to be together again to watch Bezos.

“How our mission is different is we’re going to be orbiting, and spending three days in space, participating in research and going through some really extensive training to get us there,” she continued.

“Until my mission, I could have never been a NASA astronaut with the rod that I have in my leg,” Arceneaux said. “Now that space travel is being opened up, you no longer have to be physically perfect to go to space.”

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(TUCSON, Ariz.) — Several children initially missing following a deadly fire and shooting rampage that targeted multiple first responders in Tucson, Arizona, have been found alive, police said on Monday.

Tucson Police Department Sgt. Richard Gradillas told ABC News that the two or three children who resided at a home where a badly burned body was discovered in the blaze were found on Monday, but released no further details.

Gradillas said police were still conducting an investigation to determine that the children were not harmed. He said police plan to hold a news conference on Monday afternoon to update the public on the shooting spree.

A 35-year-old man allegedly launched a shooting rampage across three different crime scenes that left at least two people dead and four wounded.

The alleged gunman, whose name has yet to be released, was critically wounded in a shootout with a police officer after he allegedly rammed the officer’s squad car with his SUV, officials said.

The gunman allegedly began the deadly rampage by targeting two EMTs who were responding to a medical emergency at a park, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said at a news conference on Sunday.

Magnus said the suspect got out of his silver SUV, approached the ambulance and opened fire, striking the driver in the head and the passenger in the arm and chest.

The 20-year-old EMT driver remained in “extremely critical condition” on Monday, while the EMT in the passenger seat, a 21-year-old woman, is listed in stable condition.

The suspect fled the scene and allegedly drove up to the house blaze in an SUV about 3:45 p.m. local time on Sunday as fire trucks were arriving.

That’s when the suspect “arrives on the scene and starts firing at both the fire department personnel and the neighbors,” Magnus said.

Without warning, the suspect unleashed a barrage of gunfire, hitting a fire department captain in the arm and fatally striking a neighbor who was helping to put out the fire in the head, police said. A second neighbor was grazed in the head by a bullet.

At this point, firefighters called the police to say they were being shot at.

The fire captain and neighbor wounded in the incident were both in good condition on Monday.

The first police officer who arrived at the scene of the fire and shooting spotted the suspect’s vehicle in the area, officials said.

The suspect’s SUV rammed the officer’s car, disabling it, Magnus said. The officer then exited the vehicle and exchanged gunfire with the alleged suspect, striking him.

Magnus said making the incident more complex is the fact a dead body was found inside the burning residence. The fire victim was burned beyond recognition and police have not released the person’s identity. Police said it’s unclear if the person’s death is directly related to the suspect.

This is a “highly tragic, really horrific incident with many unknowns,” Magnus said Sunday night. The investigation, he said, will be “lengthy and complex.”

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero posted a message on Twitter asking residents to pray for the full recovery of the wounded first responders.

“This was a horrific and senseless act of violence,” Romero said.

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(New York) — The record-breaking heat waves that have killed dozens of people in the West Coast last month have also had a dire impact on the region’s bird population, particularly its youngest members.

And wildlife experts and environmentalists are warning that this could be a dire sign of things to come as climate change continues to alter the ecosystem.

During the record-breaking heat wave at the end of June, dozens of nesting baby birds, from raptors to corvid species, have been jumping out of their nests to escape the heat and falling to the ground. The Portland Audubon Society reported that it had 100 hawks admitted to wildlife care centers during the final week of June when temperatures were as high as 116 degrees.

“As we have more heat waves and more wildfires, we’re taking away their habitat and they won’t have anywhere to nest,” Sally Compton, the executive director of Think Wild Central Oregon, a nonprofit wildlife hospital, told ABC News.

Compton said her office received triple the amount of calls of injured and separated baby birds and patients than last summer, with 60 patients at the end of June alone.

“During the busy season we have about 10 to 20 cases,” Compton said.

The patients suffered severe head trauma and other fractures, she said. Other birds have showed signs of overheating, such as mouth breathing and longer sleep periods, according to Compton.

Nesting season usually takes place between April and June in the West Coast, according to the Audubon Society. In most cases birds will build their nests in the highest locations of the forests, Compton said.

The extreme heat waves, however, made these locations more dangerous for the baby birds, she said.

“Not only are they exposed to the really high temperatures but they’re also exposed to the direct sunlight,” she said. “They have no choice that they have to flee from the nest.”

Nat Seavy, director of migration science with the Migratory Bird Initiative at the National Audubon Society, told ABC News that baby birds are the most vulnerable because they are still fledging.

“They simply don’t have the ability to move to a better place,” Seavy told ABC News.

And it’s not just the birds that are feeling the heat. Compton said she treated a golden mantle ground squirrel that suffered burns from the heat last weekend.

So far, the damage to the animals hasn’t been too harsh, according to the advocates who have been treating them.

Compton said her team has been able to heal many of the injured birds, reunite them with their families and establish nests in parts of the forests with more shade. The Portland Audubon Society also reunited some hawks that were injured.

She and other advocates warned that increased heat waves will result in long-term problems for the West Coast fauna.

Liz Hadly, a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, told ABC News that nesting seasons tend to align with times of the year that weren’t hot.

“That mismatch of the nesting period of the bird and the rising temperatures is offset. When you factor in that developmental phase of being fed in the nest and not able to leave the nest, this makes them sitting ducks,” she said.

The ecological shift could lead to several dire outcomes including, longer fledging periods for the baby birds and a decline in the number of birds that make it to adulthood, according to Hadly.

“Their nesting success may decline,” she said.

Seavy and the other experts said that this should propel everyone to work on combating climate change because once the bird population is negatively affected, it won’t take long for other animals to suffer as well.

“Birds tell us the impacts of climate change are serious,” he said. “We have to recognize that we have to address the changes for both wildlife and people.”

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