Indian-American NASA astronaut Anil Menon, will embark on his first mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Menon will begin an eight-month expedition focused on medical, technological, and spaceflight research on July 14. He will join Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina for the expedition. The mission will launch aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio will return to Earth in April 2027.
On the expedition, Menon will conduct various experiments that may support human health and help solve medical constraints for future space travel to Mars and Moon. He will study his own body to examine cardiovascular health in space, analysing how the absence of gravity affects blood circulation, vein structure, and overall blood composition.
He will also perform ultrasound imaging using artificial intelligence and augmented reality to reduce dependence on ground control during medical emergencies, among other medical experiments to help support human health in space.
He will also conduct experiments for in-space manufacturing of semiconductor crystals. Semiconductor crystals created in micro-gravity have fewer defects. This will aid in large-scale manufacturing of semiconductor crystals, which are part of components used in high-performance computing, AI hardware, and advanced medical diagnostics.
Anil isn't the first person of Indian origin to embark on an ISS mission. His predecessors include Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla. Chawla, a NASA astronaut, was the first woman of Indian origin to be a part of a space mission. She clocked 31 days of orbiting in total across two missions. Sunita Williams, another NASA astronaut, completed three major space missions. In 2012, she was part of a crew of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Here, she served as a flight engineer and then as Commander of the ISS, and spent more than 127 days in space.
49-year-old Menon was born in Minneapolis to Indian-Ukrainian immigrant parents. He is married to Anna Wilhelm Menon. Incidentally, Wilhelm too is an astronaut and was part of a September 2024 Polaris Dawn expedition, a privately crewed spaceflight operated by SpaceX, which lasted for five days. The couple has two children.
He joined NASA in 2014 as a flight surgeon, supporting astronauts living and working aboard the ISS. In 2018, he moved to SpaceX. There, he established the company’s medical programme and helped prepare its first human spaceflight missions. At SpaceX, Menon also helped develop Starship, the spacecraft entrepreneur Elon Musk hopes to launch into missions to the Moon and Mars.
Menon graduated from Harvard and spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. Here, he studied and supported polio immunisation programmes and travelled to remote villages to administer polio vaccines. Before joining NASA, he served in the US Air Force. He was part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Menon has also worked with the Himalayan Rescue Association, providing medical care to climbers on Mount Everest.