Minnesota native, NASA Astronaut Anil Menon preparing for first mission to space

INTERVIEWER: OK, this is so cool. This time next year, my next guest will be in space. NASA astronaut Anil Menon is launching on his first mission to the International Space Station in June 2026. He's previously been a flight surgeon for NASA and SpaceX. He treated astronauts from mission control. Before he was a physician or an astronaut, Dr. Menon was growing up in the Twin Cities.

So I talked with him yesterday. And fair warning, NASA had some technical issues, so the audio sounds like perhaps Dr. Menon was in a galaxy far, far away. Still, it was a fascinating conversation. Take a listen.

ANIL MENON: Hello. It's good to talk to you. My heart is in Minnesota because I grew up there, so it's exciting to talk to you about all of this stuff.

INTERVIEWER: Well, very cool. And I want to learn more. Let's start with your mission next year. I mean, what will you be working on when you're up in the Space Station?

ANIL MENON: Yeah, next year, next summer, I'll go to the International Space Station. I'll spend eight months there. And in that eight months, I'll do science that's really important for us to get to the moon and to go to Mars and do our next steps within space, and just learn about things on Earth.

There's all sorts of interesting experiments and science, and some of those are 3D printing objects manufacturing. There's some things you can do in space that's really unique, and you can only do them in space.

INTERVIEWER: So how do you prepare to be in space for eight months?

ANIL MENON: I've spent two years training for it. And so there's a multitude of skills that are really important. One interesting one is you're in this really small environment, which is the Space Station.

The surface area covers-- it could be as big as a football field, but the actual living space within it is small. And you could have seven people there, and sometimes 11 people there. And so you have to really get along well.

So one of the most important skills is just figuring out how to live with 10 or six other roommates and resolve problems really well, and we practice it. So we'll go out on expeditions together or fly together, do training missions, and things come up. I mean, we're all human, but we really pay attention to working through some of those things.

INTERVIEWER: So how do you plan to organize your life up there? I mean, I would imagine you're in space, I mean, and this is an incredible moment. You want to work 24/7, but of course, our bodies and our minds can't work 24/7. So do you have a schedule? How do you organize your life?

ANIL MENON: My answer is probably just unique to me is I'm a really routine-based person. The time is so precious that they've given us a schedule, blocked out what we should be doing, and decided how long that should take. And that could include getting ready for a spacewalk, or doing a science experiment, or exercising, or having lunch. That's all mapped out from, say, 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

Then I figure I'll save all the things like emails or figuring out dinner and hanging out with some of those crewmates or debriefing the day later in the day. And then I tend to go to sleep kind of early. I've got two kids, so they've also trained me to go to sleep early.

INTERVIEWER: So my mind is a little bit blown just thinking about getting ready for a spacewalk. I mean, you're at work. Here's your tasks. You're getting ready for a spacewalk. That is just amazing. So when did you decide, or when did you start thinking that I wanted to become an astronaut?

ANIL MENON: It was in Minnesota. I was in the Science Museum of Minnesota, and I was watching a space movie called The Dream is Alive, and I saw someone doing a spacewalk, like you were talking about, from the shuttle. And I couldn't believe that that was a career. My mom worked at a pizza place and my dad was doing computer programming, so it planted a seed. And I hung on to it for a very long time.

INTERVIEWER: And you're also married to an astronaut, Anna, and she works for SpaceX. And as I understand it, she was on a mission, or she was involved in a mission that actually made history. And can you describe it a little bit?

ANIL MENON: Yeah, it's kind of like getting courtside tickets to a basketball game you always wanted to see. I love basketball. And seeing her do that and SpaceX do it was just remarkable. She was part of a mission called Polaris Dawn that had the objectives of reaching the highest orbit other than a moon flight. And the two women on that flight, Sarah and Anna, went farthest women have gone away from Earth.

And they also raised money for St. Jude and they tested a new communication method via Starlink. We were able to communicate via that. I got a call from her on an iPhone and I missed it, and it was FaceTime. And I remember just looking at my phone when dialing, and I called it in space. But it was shocking that it picked up up there. Just talked about the advancement of technology and fidelity of those communication pathways that they were testing there.

INTERVIEWER: So you're really able to support each other. I mean, you both know what each is going through, right?

ANIL MENON: Yeah. It's easier to fly to space than it is to watch someone fly to space, to be honest. You're a lot more nervous on the ground because you spend a lot of time thinking about the risks and challenges and the family and our kids and making them comfortable. Because both of us can take on a lot of personal challenges and risk, but it's harder to see someone else do that.

So I think it was helpful for preparing for my flight in something that's kind of a shared experience. And it really caught me off guard to just have some of those feelings all at once. It's hard to prepare for those kind of things.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, and I hope it's OK to ask. How do you prepare the kids? Are they excited about this, wary about it?

ANIL MENON: Yeah, I would love to say that, but I think they're just amazingly nonchalant about it.

[LAUGHTER]

I think I was around that age, between five and seven, when I saw that IMAX movie, and I was blown away. I thought it was impossible, and I didn't even how to go about pursuing a dream like that, whereas I think they just think it's super normal.

INTERVIEWER: So there might be a kid listening to our conversation and they're thinking, well, maybe I want to go to space. I mean, what would you say to them? What is the path? Because it's not a straightfoward path to get to space.

ANIL MENON: The big picture is it's going to be radically different than it is now, because we are at an inflection point where you're seeing this huge amount of-- with the commercial crew program, NASA kicked off this commercialization of space. And I think it's starting to really pay dividends, and you're seeing that now where there are multiple commercial providers, multiple rocket launchers, people doing them at way lower costs than before through reusability. I think what it will just do is open up a lot of doors.

So what I would say to them is now is the perfect time to be interested in that. And what we say a lot is certainly, follow your passion and find things that you just love doing, and then combine that with that desire to go to space, and you can make it all work. I was interested in biology, not flying fighter jets in high school. But I thought most of the astronauts seem to be pilots, but there was a pathway to do medicine, and then to combine that with space. And I'm glad I chose to do that, because along the way, I got to help a lot of people and I got to do something that I loved doing.

INTERVIEWER: So last question, what is it? Off of what you're saying, you're practicing medicine at Mission Control. So I mean, how does that work? People are describing to you their symptoms and you're making some judgments? Or do you have a lot of data that you're getting that you're making the judgments from? How do you practice medicine from Mission Control?

ANIL MENON: How do you practice from Mission Control? By doing telemedicine, but you're doing it with a knowledge of space. So, yes, there's someone up there. Something's wrong. Let's say they have abdominal pain and some nausea and vomiting. And you're wondering, is it appendicitis or is it just some bad food that they ate?

Well, can use some tools up there. You can use an ultrasound to look at their appendix. You can maybe get some blood levels and see if they have more white blood cells than they should. You could check them remotely.

Then you got to think about space-related issues that may be layered on top of that or be affecting them. So every system changes in your body when you're up there. You have less red cell mass, less blood volume, and you have muscle loss, bone loss, increased calcium because of that. And so you start factoring in some of that to figure out if that plays a role in what's going on there.

And so it's a complicated puzzle to figure out. You're not exactly there and able to do everything. I studied wilderness medicine at Stanford, and this is really the extreme of wilderness medicine. So it's very cool if you're into those kind of challenges and helping people in unique ways like that.

INTERVIEWER: Anil Menon is a NASA astronaut who grew up in Minneapolis. His first mission to the International Space Station launches in June 2026.