Washington: The US space agency NASA has selected 10 astronauts for the ambitious Moon mission. These include Indian-born Anil Menon, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force and SpaceX’s first flight surgeon.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Menon became a part of Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX in 2018 and helped with the mission to send humans to space during the Demo-2 campaign. He also created a medical organization helping the human system during future missions.
He spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassador for the study and support of polio vaccination. Earlier in the year 2014, he joined NASA and took astronauts to the International Space Center (ISS), playing the role of a flight surgeon in various missions. Menon had given the first reaction as a doctor during the Haiti earthquake of 2010 and Nepal in 2015 and the Reno Air Show accident in 2011.
In the Air Force, Menon served as a flight surgeon in the 45th Space Wing and 173rd Flight Wing. He has been involved in over 100 flights and transported an equal number of patients as part of the critical care air transport team. He will start the initial training of astronauts from January 2022 which will continue for two years.
NASA announced a new class of astronauts on Monday. These included six men and four women. In March 2020, 12,000 passengers applied for it. These astronauts will be part of the Artemis generation. The name is inspired by NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to send the first woman and man to the surface of the Moon in early 2025. Welcoming the future astronauts during a ceremony, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “The Apollo generation has done a lot. Now this is the Artemis generation.
