Astronaut To Serve As Flight Engineer On June Soyuz Launch

Astronaut Anil Menon has been assigned his first mission to the International Space Station, NASA announced. He will serve as a flight engineer on Expedition 75 along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, expected to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in June 2025.

The Expedition 75 mission will last about eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory. Menon’s duties will include conducting scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help pave the way for humans’ future space missions, benefitting humanity.

Menon was selected to become a NASA astronaut in 2021 and graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. He then completed initial astronaut candidate training prior to the start of preparations for his first flight assignment to the station.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Menon is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and a colonel in the U.S. Space Force. He holds a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard University in Massachusetts, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, and a medical degree from Stanford university in California.

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

In his spare time (!) he still practices emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann’s Texas Medical Center and teaches residents at the University of Texas’ residency program. He was with SpaceX, where he was the company’s first flight surgeon and helped to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission while also building SpaceX’s medical organization to support humans on future missions. He served as a crew flight surgeon for both SpaceX flights and NASA expeditions.

FMI:  www.nasa.gov/