When NASA astronaut Anil Menon boards the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 14, he will not just be another astronaut on the way to the International Space Station (ISS). His journey is the culmination of a career that has encompassed medicine, engineering, military service, humanitarian relief and commercial spaceflight. Few astronauts in NASA’s history have landed on the launch pad with a resume as diverse- if not more so than Menon.
Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to an Indian father and a Ukrainian mother. His academic trajectory was similarly unusual. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in neurobiology, Stanford University with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and Stanford Medical School with a medical degree. He would become an emergency medicine, wilderness medicine, aerospace medicine, and public health expert as in human biology and advanced technology.
Before NASA chose him as an astronaut in 2021, Menon was already on the front lines of some of the most challenging humanitarian crises in the world. As an emergency physician, he was among the medical responders who treated victims after the catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake and the catastrophic 2015 Nepal earthquake. He was also in contact with the Himalayan Rescue Association to provide medical care to climbers on Mount Everest, where altitude sickness, extreme weather and lack of resources make every medical decision a matter of life and death.
His career then moved into military and aerospace medicine. Menon was a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force, flew more than 100 sorties in F-15 aircraft and participated in critical-care air transport missions for wounded service members. His experience has built his capacity to make life-saving decisions in high-risk environments skills that are very much applicable to spaceflight.
Menon joined SpaceX as the company’s first flight surgeon in 2018 and was involved in the development of medical systems and medical protocols for future commercial missions. He supported the historic Demo-2 mission, which brought human-launch capability to the US, and NASA credits him with building SpaceX’s medical team and facilitating the first crewed flights of SpaceX.
Menon’s relationship with NASA started prior to his selection. As a NASA flight surgeon, he was involved in several International Space Station expeditions and spent more than six months in Star City, Russia, with foreign partners. He gained firsthand knowledge of what astronauts face in the operational and medical field of long-term missions.
Now Menon is ready for his toughest mission yet. On July 14, he will be launched on board the Russian Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft with Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. The crew will spend more than 200 days on the ISS as part of Expeditions 74 and 75. During the mission, Menon will perform scientific research and technology demonstrations to help us in future human exploration of the Moon and Mars, including studies on blood flow, vein structure and the production of intravenous fluids in microgravity.
What makes Anil Menon so great is not just that he is an astronaut. It is that all of his life has been about helping people survive and thrive in the most challenging environments, from earthquake zones and high-altitude mountains to fighter jets, spacecraft and now orbit. And so as we move toward longer journeys into space, NASA needs astronauts who can wear many hats: physician, engineer, scientist and explorer. Menon is all of them.
His flight will not only be a personal achievement but also a testament to the potential of interdisciplinary knowledge in space exploration and the fact that the road to the stars is generally paved with service on Earth first. But for India, Menon’s story is particularly special. The son of an Indian immigrant who rose to become a doctor, engineer and astronaut, he epitomizes the ever-changing face of space exploration. His journey demonstrates that the skills required for humanity’s future in space are forged in hospitals, disaster zones, mountain rescues and countless acts of service. Anil Menon is going to space for the first time; and it is not just science and medicine that he will take with him.
