Fifteen years, extraordinary on every one of them.
On March 7, 2021, Rebecca took her ten-year-old daughter to the emergency room thinking she had a swollen jaw that needed antibiotics. A CT scan found something else — a large mass surrounding the carotid artery in her neck. An MRI and a biopsy confirmed what no parent should ever hear: undifferentiated sarcoma, an extremely rare and aggressive childhood cancer with no specific subcategory and no clear roadmap for treatment.
Olivia was ten years old.
The years that followed were not easy. Chemotherapy at Geisinger. Radiation at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Seven weeks away from home while COVID-19 restrictions kept the family from Ronald McDonald House. Surgeries, relapses, clinical trials — and through all of it, in the words of everyone who knew her, Olivia never complained. She always had a smile.
She also had goals. She wanted her pilot's license. She wanted to be class president. She wanted to go to space.
In 2021, a child life specialist at the hospital told the Perrotto family about the Inspiration4 mission — Jared Isaacman's private spaceflight to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Rebecca reached out simply to ask about buying tickets to attend the launch. Instead, Isaacman heard Olivia's story and invited the entire family — all expenses paid — to attend around her eleventh birthday.
What was expected to be a one-time act of generosity became a five-year friendship.
Over those years, Jared Isaacman flew Olivia cross-country on his personal plane to access different treatments. He personally called St. Jude to advocate for her case. He took her up in a fighter jet. Over the years, Liv's special connection to Jared and the Inspiration4 crew opened incredible doors. She had the opportunity to meet Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover at the Polaris Dawn launch, as well as Apollo 16 Moonwalker Charlie Duke and William Shatner during the Space2Sea voyage to Antarctica. He could be texted at two in the morning. He sent flowers and birthday cakes and notes to her throughout her hospitalizations.
And then he asked her to design something.
For his next mission — Polaris Dawn, the historic spaceflight that completed the first commercial spacewalk — Isaacman wanted a zero-gravity indicator. He asked Olivia to create it. She sketched a Shiba Inu dog in an astronaut suit and named it Asteroid. Her reason, in her own words: she designed it to inspire other children. If a plush toy could reach space, they could too.
“I want other children to see: Oh, Asteroid went to space, and I can too.”
The Polaris Dawn team transformed her hand-drawn sketch into an actual plush toy. In September 2024, Asteroid flew on the historic spaceflight that completed the first commercial spacewalk, filmed floating in microgravity while Olivia — then fourteen years old — watched from the ground.
That same fall, her cancer returned aggressively. Olivia began 9th grade at Blue Mountain Academy, the Adventist boarding school she had chosen herself. She was there only a few months before her relapse, but in that short time she made the closest friends she had ever had.
In the final months of her life, the Polaris Dawn crew stayed in contact — sending flowers and notes to the house, visiting her in the hospital. Four days before she went to sleep in Christ, they Zoomed with her to ask her what her wishes were.
She had prepared eight handwritten questions for Elon Musk. She was too fatigued to take the call when the time came. Musk answered all eight questions publicly on X. He also sent flowers and a note — which the family placed in her casket.
Her eighth and final question was the one she cared most about: Could Asteroid be the mascot for SpaceX? Musk's reply was a single word: “Ok.”
Asteroid is now the official mascot of SpaceX Corporation.
Olivia Justine Perrotto was born July 28, 2010. She went to sleep in Christ on January 14, 2026. She was fifteen years old.
She asked us to keep going. So we are.
Who she was when the cameras were off and the hospital was quiet.
Olivia was a nerd — Glenn Beck said so himself, and he meant it as the highest compliment. She was deeply into anime and manga. She loved Japanese culture and cherry blossoms and kawaii art. Her cats were named Mao Mao and Yuki — Japanese names, of course.
She drew constantly. Her sketchbooks were full of anime characters, self-portraits, and her own invented worlds. The cartoon girl that anchors this foundation's visual identity is based on Olivia's own self-portrait — her drawing, her Japanese outfit, her character. She drew it herself. We just made it bigger.
She had goals the way other kids have hobbies. She wanted her pilot's license. She wanted to be class president. She wanted to fly fighter jets and then go to space. She was a go-getter — in the words of her dad, "She had goals. She had objectives." And she pursued them even when her body made it harder than it should have been for a teenager.
Her faith was not something she set aside when things got hard. The Perrotto family is Seventh-Day Adventist, and Olivia's faith was central to who she was. She attended Blue Mountain Academy — an Adventist boarding school near Hamburg, Pennsylvania — in her final fall semester. She was nervous and ready in equal measure, the way a brave teenager is. She made the closest friends of her life in just a few months. They came to see her at the end.
She also loved her little sister Abby. Deeply. One of her wishes was to help Abby, to help her BMA friends, and to make sure other kids in hospital rooms didn't feel as alone as cancer can make you feel.
We're still learning what Olivia most loved to say, and how she said it. Her sister Abby is helping us capture those details — because some memories belong to the people who knew her best.
Olivia spent her life helping other sick kids, like her. Now it's our turn.
Every gift is a promise kept. Every family we help is one she would have cheered for.