NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who has family roots in Kerala, has successfully reached the International Space Station (ISS) on his first space mission. Menon, along with Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, arrived aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft after a little over three hours following liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The spacecraft launched at 8:17 pm IST on Tuesday and docked with the ISS’s Prichal module at 11:52 pm IST. After routine safety checks, the crew entered the station at around 2:00 am. A brief interruption in NASA’s live broadcast occurred just before hatch opening due to a temporary loss of satellite communication, but the feed resumed 12 minutes later.
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Menon’s launch was witnessed by his wife, fellow astronaut Anna Wilhelm, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. The trio will spend approximately eight months aboard the ISS before returning to Earth in April 2027. During the mission, Menon will conduct scientific research on the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, including studies on blood flow, vein structure, blood composition, and the impact of microgravity. He will also help test technology that can produce intravenous fluids using the station’s potable water system—an innovation that could prove vital for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
Born in Minneapolis to an Indian father from Ottapalam, Palakkad, and a Ukrainian mother, the 49-year-old is an emergency medicine physician, a US Space Force colonel, and a former NASA flight surgeon. Before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, he served in Afghanistan, supported climbers on Mount Everest with the Himalayan Rescue Association, worked on India’s polio vaccination programme as a Rotary Scholar, and later led SpaceX’s medical programme while helping prepare its first human spaceflights and the development of Starship.
Adding a special India-Russia connection to the mission, the Soyuz rocket also carried drawings created by Indian schoolchildren, winners of the “First Forever” competition marking the 65th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight and celebrating India-Russia cooperation in space exploration.
Aboard the ISS, Menon joins 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 as they continue scientific research aimed at advancing human space exploration and benefiting life on Earth.
