NASA astronaut Anil Menon set for 8-month mission to space station
Anil Menon, a NASA astronaut of Indian descent, is set to embark on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station on Tuesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan along with two Russian cosmonauts. The Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft is scheduled for lift-off from the Baikonur spaceport at 8.17 pm. (IST) On Tuesday and is expected to dock at the orbital laboratory after a little over three hours.
Besides Menon, Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina will be part of the 75th expedition to the ISS. The Soyuz spacecraft will dock at the ISS at 11.56 pm. IST on Tuesday, and the astronauts will be onboard the ISS at around 1.25 am IST early Wednesday.
Once aboard, the trio will join NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev. Born in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants, Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a US Space Force colonel.
During his stint with the US Air Force, he served on the frontlines in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and also worked for the Himalayan Rescue Association, caring for climbers on Mount Everest. Menon, 49, has also spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support Polio vaccination initiatives.
