Hayden Geraghty is only nine but he is already busy saving the planet.
Most kids his age play with their friends after school but our little guy right here is already the youngest Planetary Defense Ambassador of the European Space Agency.
Hayden, who has autism, has been interested in space since he was young that it is what inspired him to say his first sentence after not speaking for years. He is now campaigning for funding that could help protect the planet from a deadly asteroid in the future.
In an interview with LADbible, Hayden’s mother, Caroline, said: “Right up until he was five years old, Hayden was completely non-verbal. He tried to say the odd word up to then, but the communication was very difficult for him.
“I noticed from a very young age he enjoyed looking at the night sky and stargazing – he was just so absorbed, it had such a calming effect on him.”
Hayden also watched along when astronaut Tim Peake was launched into space in December 2015. “It was all over the news,” Caroline recalled. “They kept doing replays of Tim’s launch and it just grabbed Hayden’s attention.
“The next minute he started doing the countdown,’10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 ,3, 2, 1′, and he just shouted out ‘Blast off!’, and that was the first actual time that he said a full sentence.
“It was like a lightbulb switch on moment, that just unlocked a connection that he couldn’t find.I was just so amaze.”
Caroline continued: “As he progressed and got older I started taking him to different space events. He has ADHD as well, so we could never take him to the cinema as he just couldn’t sit still to concentrate. But if we took him to astronomy lectures he would sit for the whole hour and a half, just absolutely transfixed with what they were saying.
“Some of the stuff for a child of his age is really advanced, but he seems to grasp it, which is totally mind-blowing.”
The young boy’s passion grew and Caroline would feed his curiosity by taking him to events where he would meet scientists, NASA astronauts, and more.
Hayden eventually impressed the European Space Agency and they invited him into the fold. They took him as a Planetary Defense Ambassador!
He is now working with the ESA to secure the crucial funding for the Hera mission, which will see the first spacecraft ever to visit a double asteroid, Didymos. This could give information on how we could stop an asteroid from hitting our planet.
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