NASA Astronaut Anil Menon to Discuss Upcoming Launch, Mission

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NASA Astronaut Anil Menon to Discuss Upcoming Launch, Mission

Elizabeth Shaw

Apr 22, 2026 MEDIA ADVISORY

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NASA astronaut Anil Menon participates in a spacewalk training session at NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas, ahead of his upcoming mission to the International Space Station. NASA/David DeHoyos

NASA will host a news conference at 1:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 29, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to preview astronaut Anil Menon ’s upcoming mission to the International Space Station.

Watch the news conference live on NASA’s YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.

Following the news conference, individual interviews with Menon will begin at 3 p.m.

United States-based media interested in attending the news conference in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov by 5 p.m. Monday, April 27. U.S. and international media interested in participating by phone must contact NASA Johnson by 9:45 a.m. Thursday, April 23. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Requests for interviews with Menon should be submitted by 5 p.m., April 27. In-person interviews are limited to U.S. media. International media may request to conduct interviews virtually.

The Soyuz MS-29 mission, targeted to launch Tuesday, July 14, will carry Menon and his crewmates, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, to the International Space Station for an eight-month stay as part of Expeditions 74/75. It will be Menon’s first spaceflight.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, Menon graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. After completing initial astronaut candidate training, he began preparing for his first space station flight assignment.

Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis and 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 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a medical degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Menon completed his emergency medicine and aerospace medicine residency at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, respectively.

Menon still actively practices emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann’s Texas Medical Center and teaches residents at the University of Texas’ residency program. For NASA, Menon also has served as an expedition flight surgeon for the agency’s crew members aboard the space station. Previously, Menon worked at SpaceX and served as the company’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission in 2020 and building its medical organization to support humans on future missions.

For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and prepare for deep space missions to the Moon as part of the Artemis program in preparation for future human missions to Mars.

Learn more about the International Space Station at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Anna Schneider / Shaneequa Vereen
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov / shaneequa.y.vereen@nasa.gov

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Last Updated Apr 22, 2026

Related Terms

• Humans in Space
• Anil Menon
• Astronauts
• International Space Station (ISS)
• Missions