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Anil Menon: Who Is NASA Astronaut Whose Wife Went On Private Spacewalk Mission In 2024?
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NASA said it is sending Anil Menon for his first mission to the International Space Station as a flight engineer and Expedition 75 crew member in June 2026
Selected to be an astronaut in 2021, Anil Menon will make his first trip to space as a flight engineer and Expedition 75 crew member in June 2026.
NASA said it is sending Menon for his first mission to the International Space Station next year, and he will be launching aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.
The premier space agency said after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the trio will spend approximately eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory.
Anil Menon, who is a NASA Artemis astronaut candidate graduate, will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future space missions.
Fun fact: his wife Anna Menon, who worked for NASA before joining SpaceX, went for a private spacewalk mission last year. She is a lead space operations engineer at Elon Musk's company and has written a children's book about space titled Kisses from Space.
Like his wife, he has also worked for SpaceX, serving as the first flight surgeon while helping to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission and building SpaceX's medical organisation to support humans on future missions. He served as a crew flight surgeon for both SpaceX flights and NASA expeditions aboard the space station.
Menon graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. He began preparing for his first space station flight assignment after completing initial astronaut candidate training.
He still practises emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann's Texas Medical Center and teaches residents at the University of Texas residency programme in his spare time.
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