Menon (45) was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Ukrainian and Indian parents.
He was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping with the company’s first mission to launch humans into space during NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission, and building a medical organization to support the human system during future missions. did.
NASA said in a statement on Monday that it selected 10 new astronauts, half of whom are military pilots.
The space agency ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration’ (NASA) introduced six men and four women during a ceremony in Houston. Houston is the center of the Mission Control and Astronaut Corps. For this more than 12 thousand people had applied. The 10 selected people, aged between 30 and 40 years, will be given the first two years of training to be able to travel in ‘spaceflight’.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson introduces members of the 2021 new class of astronauts for the first time in four years, during an event at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (Dec. 6).
“Today we are welcoming 10 new inventors, 10 new members of the Artemis generation, into NASA’s 2021 Astronaut Participation Orbiter,” Nelson said.
These participants will report on Johnson for two years of training from January 2022.
Menon previously served NASA as a crew flight surgeon for various missions that took astronauts to the International Space Station.
He is an actively practicing emergency medicine specialist with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine.
As a physician, he was part of the first response team during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and the 2011 Reno Air Show crash.
In the Air Force, Menon served as a flight surgeon in the 45th Space Wing and 173rd Fighter Wing, where he flew over 100 flights in an F-15 fighter jet and treated over 100 patients as part of the Critical Care Air Transport Team. treated.
In July, aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla became the third woman of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams to fly into space.
Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma is the only Indian citizen to travel in space. The former Indian Air Force pilot flew on a Soyuz T-11 on April 3, 1984, as part of the Soviet Intercosmos program.
.