Who Is Anil Menon? Kerala-Origin NASA Astronaut To Travel To Space Station

Washington DC: NASA astronaut Anil Menon has been assigned his first mission to the International Space Station, serving as a flight engineer and Expedition 75 crew member, NASA said in its official statement. Anil's father Madhav Menon hails from Kerala and his mother is from Ukraine. Anil worked in the US Air Force for a long time. Later, he became a flight surgeon at SpaceX. His wife Anna Menon is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX as well as an astronaut to NASA, Menon will launch aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft in June 2026, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. After launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the trio will spend approximately eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory. During his expedition, Menon will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future space missions and benefit humanity.

Born in Minneapolis

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, Menon graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. After completing initial astronaut candidate training, he began preparing for his first space station flight assignment. Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis and is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and colonel in the United States Space Force. He was born to Indian and Ukrainian parents, the NASA statement added holds a bachelor's degree in neurobiology from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and a medical degree from Stanford University in California. Menon completed his emergency medicine and aerospace medicine residency at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston his spare time, he still practices emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann's Texas Medical Center and teaches residents at the University of Texas' residency program. Menon served as SpaceX's first flight surgeon, helping to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission and building SpaceX's medical organization to support humans on future missions. He served as a crew flight surgeon for both SpaceX flights and NASA expeditions aboard the space station nearly 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and conducting critical research for the benefit of humanity and our home planet. Space station research supports the future of human spaceflight as NASA looks toward deep space missions to the Moon under the Artemis campaign and in preparation for future human missions to Mars, as well as expanding commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit and beyond.

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