Anil Menon will be next Indian-American to go to space. Who is he?

Nasa has picked Indian-American astronaut Anil Menon for a space mission scheduled for 2026.

He is set to make his first journey into space in June that year.

Menon will be part of the Expedition 75 crew and will serve as a flight engineer during the mission.

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Interestingly, his wife Anna Menon also worked at Nasa, later joined SpaceX and took part in a private spacewalk mission last year.

But who is Anil Menon? And what do we know about his upcoming mission?

Here’s a look:

Who is Anil Menon?

Chosen as a Nasa astronaut in 2021, he will head to space for the first time in June 2026. He will join the Expedition 75 crew as a flight engineer.

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Nasa has announced that Menon will travel to the International Space Station next year aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft. He will fly alongside Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.

While on board, Menon will carry out science experiments and test new technology. The aim is to support future human missions to space and bring benefits back to Earth.

He was part of Nasa’s 23rd astronaut class in 2021 and finished his astronaut training in 2024. Since then, he has been preparing for this mission.

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Menon grew up in Minneapolis. He is a trained emergency medicine doctor, a mechanical engineer, and a colonel in the United States Space Force.

He was born to Ukrainian and Indian immigrant parents. He also spent a year studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

He holds a degree in neurobiology from Harvard University, along with a master’s in mechanical engineering and a medical degree from Stanford University.

Menon completed his training in emergency and aerospace medicine at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Before joining Nasa, he worked at SpaceX as their first flight surgeon. He helped send the first crewed Dragon spacecraft into orbit during Nasa’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. He also helped set up SpaceX’s medical programme to support future missions.

He has worked as a flight surgeon for several SpaceX launches and Nasa missions to the space station.

It was worth the wait !!! pic.twitter.com/Btld3jGFsW

— Anil Menon (@astro_anil) September 15, 2024

Who is Anna Menon, astronaut and Anil Menon’s wife?

Anil Menon is married to Anna Menon, who also works at SpaceX.

The couple has two children.

Anna earlier worked at Nasa before moving to SpaceX. Last year, she took part in a private spacewalk mission.

She is currently a lead space operations engineer at Elon Musk’s company. Anna has also written a children’s book about space titled Kisses from Space.

She has played key roles as a mission controller in several missions, including Demo-2, Crew-1, CRS-22, and CRS-23.

Before joining SpaceX, Anna spent seven years at Nasa, where she worked as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station.

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Sunita Williams and Shubhanshu Shukla’s space journeys

Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams, who was part of the Crew-9 team, went on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station last year.

She returned to Earth in March this year after being stranded in space for over nine months due to issues with the Boeing spacecraft, which delayed her return.

Born on September 19, 1965, in Ohio, Williams is a former US Navy captain.

Her father, Deepak Pandya, is from Jhulasan in Gujarat’s Mehsana district, while her mother, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya, is Slovenian.

Williams has proudly embraced her roots during space missions, carrying items such as samosas, a Ganesha idol, and the Slovenian flag.

This was her third mission to space. With this trip, she has now spent a total of 608 days in orbit.

Meanwhile, Shubhanshu Shukla has become the first Indian to visit the International Space Station as part of the Axiom-4 (Ax-4) mission.

He travelled aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida last month.

Among the personal items he carried with him were specially prepared Indian foods: mango nectar, gajar ka halwa, and moong dal halwa.

Notably, Shukla is the first Indian in 41 years to travel to space, after Rakesh Sharma’s historic eight-day space journey in 1984.

With inputs from agencies