Anil Menon to Travel to International Space Station (ISS) as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astronaut

Key facts

• Anil Menon, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut of Indian descent, is scheduled to launch on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
• He will travel aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft along with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.
• Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a United States (US) Space Force colonel.
• He began his career at NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014 and joined SpaceX in 2018 to establish the company's medical programme and assist in the development of the Starship rocket.
• He served in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom with the US Air Force and worked for the Himalayan Rescue Association on Mount Everest.
• Menon spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support Polio vaccination initiatives.
• His mission objectives include studying the effects of microgravity on blood flow and composition, testing intravenous fluid production, and refining the in-space production of semiconductor crystals.