Kerala celebrated a proud moment on Tuesday as Kerala-origin NASA astronaut Anil Menon began his first journey to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft.
Menon lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina as part of Expedition 74. The mission is expected to last around eight months, during which the crew will conduct scientific experiments and technology demonstrations aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The 49-year-old astronaut has roots in Ottapalam, Palakkad district, and is the great-grandson of Sir C. Sankaran Nair, the former president of the Indian National Congress.
Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar congratulated Menon on the milestone, calling him the pride of Kerala. In a social media post, the Governor recalled visiting Menon’s ancestral home, Chettur House in Ottapalam, to pay tribute to Sir C. Sankaran Nair.
Political leaders across the state also hailed the achievement, describing Menon’s mission as a historic moment for Kerala and an inspiration for future generations.
Born in Minneapolis to an Indian father, K.P. Shankaran Menon, and a Ukrainian mother, Elizabeth, Anil Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a colonel in the U.S. Space Force.
Before becoming an astronaut, he served as a NASA flight surgeon and later joined SpaceX, where he established the company’s medical programme and played a key role in preparing its first human spaceflight missions and the development of the Starship programme.
Menon was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021 and completed two years of intensive astronaut training before being assigned to his first space mission.
During his stay aboard the ISS, he will conduct research in human health, biology, physics and space technologies. The findings are expected to support future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
Space exploration also runs in the family. Menon’s wife, Anna Wilhelm, travelled to space in 2024 as part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, making them one of the few couples to have flown on space missions.
