Physician-astronaut Anil Menon, a former flight surgeon with NASA and then SpaceX who rejoined NASA as an astronaut along with his wife Anna, rocketed into space Tuesday with two Russian cosmonauts for an eight-month stay aboard the International Space Station.Soyuz MS-29/75S commander Pyotr Dubrov, flanked on his left by cosmonaut Anna Kikina and on the right by Menon, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. EDT. Eight minutes and 46 seconds later, after a smooth climb to orbit, the Soyuz was released for a two-orbit rendezvous with the sprawling lab complex.A Russian Soyuz rocket blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying two veteran cosmonauts and a NASA rookie on a flight to the International Space Station. / Credit: NASA/RoscosmosWhile Menon is a space rookie, he’s no stranger to space operations. He met his wife, Anna, while both were working for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, he as a flight surgeon and she as a biomedical engineer and flight controller. Both left NASA in 2018 and went to work for SpaceX.AdvertisementAdvertisementMenon was the company’s first flight surgeon, helping establish astronaut medical protocols for commercial space flights. His wife worked as a senior engineer and was one of two SpaceX employees who flew to space in 2024 on a five-day Crew Dragon flight chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman, now NASA’s administrator.Menon left SpaceX and returned to NASA after applying and being selected to join the agency’s astronaut corps in 2021. Anna was selected to join the corps in 2025 and will be available for flight assignment after she completes two years of initial training.NASA astronauts Anna and Anil Menon, posing with their two children. / Credit: NASAMenon’s family flew to Kazakhstan to attend the Soyuz launch as did Isaacman, his first visit to the complex since taking the reigns at NASA.”In terms of me and Anna, I would say there was a zero percent chance we thought this would happen, but it does go to show that if you keep working at som …
