NASA astronaut Anil Menon assigned mission to International Space Station

NASA astronaut Anil Menon has been assigned his first mission to the International Space Station as a flight engineer and Expedition 75 crew member.

The astronaut will be onboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft in June 2026, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.

After launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the trio will spend approximately eight months aboard the orbiting laboratory, NASA said in a statement.

Menon will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future space missions during his mission.

Menon was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021. He graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. After completing initial astronaut candidate training, he began preparing for his first space station flight assignment.

Who is Anil Menon?
Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis and is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and colonel in the United States Space Force. He was born to Indian and Ukrainian parents.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard University in Cambridge, 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.

Before joining NASA, Menon served as SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission and building SpaceX’s medical organization to support humans on future missions. He has served as a crew flight surgeon for both SpaceX flights and NASA expeditions aboard the space station.