Our Bureau
Washington, DC
Lt Col Dr Anil Menon, originally from Kerala has been selected as one of the 12 new astronauts who have successfully graduated from their rigorous training program and earned astronaut wings. These 12 hand-picked astronauts were selected from a total pool of 12,000 applicants, NASA Johnson Space Center Director Dr Vanessa Wyche announced the details of their latest astronaut candidate graduation ceremony.
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.
Menon graduated from Saint Paul Academy and Summit School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1995. He received his bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology, from Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999 and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
At Harvard, Menon studied neurobiology and conducted research on Huntington’s disease. He later spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support Polio vaccination. He attended Stanford Medical School where he studied engineering and medicine and worked on coding soft tissue models at NASA Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California. During his residency training in emergency medicine, Menon joined the California Air National Guard and gained experience in wilderness medicine through support for remote adventure races like Racing The Planet.
He was deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom and worked for the Himalayan Rescue Association to care for climbers on Mount Everest. Menon later transferred to the 173rd Fighter Wing for military duty and pursued a residency in aerospace medicine.
With research spanning neurobiology, wilderness medicine, and aerospace medicine, his work at NASA Ames Research Center on coding soft tissue models and his thesis on medical kits for commercial spaceflight has contributed significantly to the field of space medicine. When asked about his roots in Kerala, Dr Menon says, “I am proud to be from Kerala. My father is from there and he lives in India now.”
On the eve of this year’s National Science Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi awarded astronaut wings to 4 newly trained Indian astronauts of ISRO. Dr Menon and Prasanth Nair, the ISRO astronaut have their origins in remote villages of Palakkad district.
