NASA picks Anil Menon among 10 new Moon mission astronauts
   Date :08-Dec-2021

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WASHINGTON :
 
INDIAN-ORIGIN Anil Menon, a Lieutenant Colonel with the US Air Force and SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, has been selected by NASA among the 10 new astronauts who could fly to the Moon someday. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Menon helped launch the Elon Musk-run SpaceX’s first humans to space during the ‘Demo-2’ mission and built a medical organisation to support the human system during future missions. He also spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support polio vaccination. Prior to that, he served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions taking astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
 
Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine. As a physician, he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and the 2011 Reno Air Show accident. The US space agency announced the selection of its newest class of astronauts late on Monday -- six men and four women chosen from more than 12,000 people who applied to the space agency in March of 2020. Once they train and become full astronauts, they will have some exciting spaceflight opportunities ahead of them, potentially including flights to the Moon someday.