Washington: Dr. Anil Menon, son of Indian and Ukrainian immigrants, has graduated as a Nasa astronaut after a two-year-long training with the American space agency.
Anil Menon was selected by NASA to join the 2021 Astronaut Candidate Class and he reported for duty in January 2022. Menon was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch its first humans to space during the Demo-2 mission and building a medical organization to support the human system during future missions.
Prior to that, he served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions on the International Space Station. Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine.
As a physician he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and the 2011 Reno Air Show accident. In the U.S. Air Force, Lt. Col. Menon supports the 45th Space Wing as a flight surgeon and supported the 173rd Fighter Wing where he logged over 100 sorties in the F-15 and transported over 100 patients as part of the critical care air transport team.
Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants. He is married to Anna Menon who works at SpaceX, and they have two children. Menon enjoys teaching general aviation as a certified flight instructor and has logged over 1,000 hours as a pilot.
