NASA astronaut Anil Menon to launch on his first ISS mission in June 2026 aboard Soyuz MS-29 with two Russian cosmonauts. Photos/X.
Anil Menon, the NASA astronaut, will make his first journey to space as a flight engineer and crew member of Expedition 75 aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2026, spsce agency, NASA has announced.
Menon is scheduled to launch on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft along with Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, NASA announced. The Three astronauts will spend near about eight months on the ISS. They will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in June 2026.
Menon is scheduled to conduct a various scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. The aim of the experiments is to support human space exploration and improvement of life on Earth.
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Anil Menon was born in 1976 in the United States . He has Indian and Ukrainian roots.
Menon is a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force while also being a trained emergency medicine physician. He served as a flight surgeon at NASA before being selected as a NASA astronaut.
Menon has a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard University. He also has a medical degree and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
He later completed residency training in emergency medicine and aerospace medicine at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. There, he also wrote a thesis on medical kits designed for commercial spaceflight.
Menon has contributed to the development of the SpaceX’s medical support systems for human missions as a first flight surgeon,.
He has also played an important role in the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. The mission marked the first crewed flight of the Dragon spacecraft.
Menon also served as a crew flight surgeon for ISS missions of both NASA and SpaceX.
Menon was selected as part of NASA’s 23rd astronaut candidate class in 2021. He graduated in 2024 and started training for his upcoming mission to the ISS.
Menon is married to Anna Menon, a SpaceX Lead Space Operations Engineer. The couple has two children.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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