Meet Anil Menon: The NASA Astronaut Who Went From Mount Everest Rescues To An 8-Month ISS Mission Starting Tuesday

NASA astronaut Anil Menon launches on Tuesday aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, beginning his first mission to the International Space Station, an eight-month assignment focused on studying long-duration microgravity’s effects on the body and testing medical technology for future spaceflight.

Before space, though, Menon’s career already read like an adventure list. The 49-year-old emergency medicine physician and US Space Force Colonel served on the frontlines in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, then worked with the Himalayan Rescue Association treating climbers on Mount Everest. He has logged more than 1,000 hours as a certified flight instructor.

Born in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrant parents, Menon has often spoken about the pride he takes in his Indian heritage and the way the country’s space ambitions inspire him. After Harvard, he spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, based in Delhi’s Greater Kailash, supporting polio immunisation programmes and travelling to remote villages to help vaccinate children.

Menon joined NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014, working directly with astronauts aboard the ISS, before moving to SpaceX in 2018 to help build the company’s medical programme and support development of Starship. He was selected as a NASA astronaut in December 2021.

He is married to fellow astronaut Anna Wilhelm Menon, who spent nearly five days in orbit during SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024. The couple share two children.