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NEW DELHI: ndian-origin Anil Menon, a lieutenant colonel with the US Air Force and former first flight surgeon of Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, has been chosen along with nine other candidates for Nasa’s human spaceflight mission to Moon under the Artemis programme, which is scheduled for launch by 2024-25 and plans to send humans to the lunar south pole.
Menon is among the six men and four women chosen from more than 12,000 people, who applied to the US space agency to join the Artemis training programme in March 2020. Their inclusion in the two-year rigorous training programme, however, does not guarantee that each of them will be sent to Moon. Menon is a practising emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in aerospace medicine.
Born to parents who migrated from India and Ukraine and raised in Minneapolis, Menon graduated in neurobiology from Harvard University in 1999 and got his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2004. He later also completed doctor of medicine from Stanford Medical School.
The 45-year-old had helped launch SpaceX’s first humans to space in 2018 and was the lead flight surgeon for five SpaceX launches and also worked on its Starship project. Married to Anna Menon, who works for SpaceX, the couple have two children. He had also spent a year in India as a rotary ambassadorial scholar to study and support the polio vaccination programme.
Just like his Nasa colleague and another PIO Raja Chari, Menon had served in the US Air Force as a lieutenant colonel and logged over 100 sorties in the F-15 fighter jet and transported over 100 patients as part of the critical care air transport team.
In 2014, Menon started as a Nasa flight surgeon and supported four long-duration crew members on the ISS as deputy crew surgeon for Soyuz missions Soyuz 39 and Soyuz 43 and prime crew surgeon for Soyuz 52.
As a physician, he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and later during the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. He was also deployed in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom.
“Today, we welcome 10 new explorers — 10 members of the Artemis generation,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a selection ceremony. “It was the Apollo generation, and that did so much for so many. Now it’s the Artemis generation,” he said.
Anil Menon and the nine selected members will join the training programme in January 2022 to be a Nasa astronaut candidate. After their training, they could be assigned to Nasa missions involving research aboard the International Space Station, deep space missions to destinations, including Moon, on the Orion spacecraft and space launch system rocket.
Menon is among the six men and four women chosen from more than 12,000 people, who applied to the US space agency to join the Artemis training programme in March 2020. Their inclusion in the two-year rigorous training programme, however, does not guarantee that each of them will be sent to Moon. Menon is a practising emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in aerospace medicine.
Born to parents who migrated from India and Ukraine and raised in Minneapolis, Menon graduated in neurobiology from Harvard University in 1999 and got his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2004. He later also completed doctor of medicine from Stanford Medical School.
The 45-year-old had helped launch SpaceX’s first humans to space in 2018 and was the lead flight surgeon for five SpaceX launches and also worked on its Starship project. Married to Anna Menon, who works for SpaceX, the couple have two children. He had also spent a year in India as a rotary ambassadorial scholar to study and support the polio vaccination programme.
Just like his Nasa colleague and another PIO Raja Chari, Menon had served in the US Air Force as a lieutenant colonel and logged over 100 sorties in the F-15 fighter jet and transported over 100 patients as part of the critical care air transport team.
In 2014, Menon started as a Nasa flight surgeon and supported four long-duration crew members on the ISS as deputy crew surgeon for Soyuz missions Soyuz 39 and Soyuz 43 and prime crew surgeon for Soyuz 52.
As a physician, he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and later during the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. He was also deployed in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom.
“Today, we welcome 10 new explorers — 10 members of the Artemis generation,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a selection ceremony. “It was the Apollo generation, and that did so much for so many. Now it’s the Artemis generation,” he said.
Anil Menon and the nine selected members will join the training programme in January 2022 to be a Nasa astronaut candidate. After their training, they could be assigned to Nasa missions involving research aboard the International Space Station, deep space missions to destinations, including Moon, on the Orion spacecraft and space launch system rocket.
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