Indian origin doctor chosen as astronaut by NASA for moon mission

Washington: The United States mission in India on Wednesday congratulated Indian origin physician Dr Anil Menon for getting selected for NASA's 2021 Astronaut Candidate Class.

Menon is one of 10 astronauts chosen from over 12,000 applicants to represent the US as part of NASA's cutting-edge missions to further our understanding of space.

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"Congratulations to Indian American Dr Anil Menon for his selection as part of @NASA's 2021 Astronaut Candidate Class! Anil is one of 10 astronauts chosen from over 12,000 applicants to represent U.S. as part of NASA's cutting-edge missions to further our understanding of space," US Embassy in India tweeted.

Indian-origin doctor Anil Menon has been selected along with nine others to be astronauts for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s future space missions.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Ukrainian and Indian immigrant parents, 45-year-old Menon has previously served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions on the International Space Station (ISS).

A lieutenant colonel at the US Air Force, Menon is married to Anna Menon who works at SpaceX, and they share two children.

The new group of NASA astronauts will have some exciting spaceflight opportunities ahead of them that will potentially include flights to the Moon someday, the space agency announced.

According to The Verge, NASA announced the selection of its 2021 class of astronauts on Monday from more than 12,000 people who applied to the space agency in March of 2020. Among those who have been selected are six men and four women.

Menon, who will be reporting for duty in January 2022, was American aerospace corporation SpaceX's first flight surgeon, who helped to launch its first humans to space during the Demo-2 mission and in building a medical organization to support the human system during future missions, as per his official NASA profile.

Apart from Menon, the new astronauts who have been selected include Nichole Ayers, Marcos Berrios, Christina Birch, Deniz Burnham, Luke Delaney, Andre Douglas, Jack Hathaway, Christopher Williams, and Jessica Wittner.

NASA's administrator, Bill Nelson, introduced the group live from Ellington Field near the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the candidates will spend the majority of the next two years training.

The program calls for launching astronauts on a series of flights into deep space on NASA's new massive rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, eventually culminating with humans landing on the Moon once again.

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