NASA’s Anil Menon, Who Once Vaccinated Children In Rural India, Launches To The ISS On Tuesday

Tuesday marks the start of astronaut Anil Menon’s first spaceflight, an eight-month mission to the International Space Station aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft, launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Once in orbit, the 49-year-old will focus on research into the physiological toll of long-duration microgravity and test medical technology built for future missions.

Menon is an emergency medicine physician and US Space Force Colonel whose father emigrated from India, a heritage he has repeatedly said he takes pride in, pointing to India’s space programme as something that motivates him personally.

That link to India is not just ancestral. After finishing at Harvard, Menon spent a year in the country as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, living in Delhi’s Greater Kailash and working on polio immunisation efforts, including trips to remote villages to help vaccinate children.

His path to NASA took several unusual turns. He served on the frontlines in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, worked with the Himalayan Rescue Association treating climbers on Mount Everest, and has logged more than 1,000 hours flying as a certified flight instructor. He joined NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014, moved to SpaceX in 2018 to build out its medical programme and support Starship’s development, and was selected as a NASA astronaut in December 2021.

Menon’s wife, Anna Wilhelm Menon, is also an astronaut and spent nearly five days in space during SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024. The couple have two children.