Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
NASA astronaut Anil Menon is scheduled to launch on the Soyuz MS-29 mission, targeted for July 14, joining Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina for an eight-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Expeditions 74 and 75.
Menon, selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, graduated with NASA's 23rd astronaut class in 2024. This will be his first spaceflight.
Born and raised in Minneapolis, Menon is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. He holds a bachelor's degree in neurobiology from Harvard University, a master's in mechanical engineering, and a medical degree from Stanford University.
He completed residencies in emergency medicine and aerospace medicine at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch, respectively. Menon practices emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann’s Texas Medical Center and educates residents at the University of Texas residency program.
Prior to his astronaut career, Menon worked at SpaceX as the company’s first flight surgeon, supporting the launch of the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission in 2020, and helped establish SpaceX's medical organization for human spaceflight.
The ISS has been continuously inhabited for over 25 years, serving as a platform for scientific research and technology demonstrations not possible on Earth.