Nasa’s Menon rides Soyuz into orbit with Russian crew

Indian-origin Nasa astronaut Anil Menon arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, 14 July, after lifting off from Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts for an eight-month mission that underscores the endurance of US-Russia cooperation in orbit.

Menon, Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7.47 pm local time, or 8.17 pm in India. The spacecraft reached orbit within minutes and docked automatically with the station’s Prichal module about three hours later. The crew entered the orbiting laboratory after the connecting hatches were opened.

The flight marks Menon’s first journey into space and the second for both Dubrov and Kikina. The three will live and work aboard the station as members of Expeditions 74 and 75 before returning to Earth in April 2027.

For Menon, the launch completed an unusual transition from looking after astronauts on the ground to becoming one himself. The 49-year-old is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer and colonel in the US Space Force. Before joining Nasa, he served as SpaceX’s first flight surgeon and helped prepare crews for the company’s initial human spaceflight missions. He was selected for Nasa’s astronaut corps in 2021 and graduated with its 23rd astronaut class in 2024.

Menon had also worked as a Nasa flight surgeon, supporting astronauts aboard the space station and helping manage the medical demands of missions in which routine health problems can become serious operational risks That background will now shape his work in orbit.

Among the hundreds of investigations planned during the mission, Menon is expected to participate in studies examining how microgravity changes astronauts’ veins, blood flow and blood composition.

He will also help test whether intravenous fluids can be produced from the station’s drinking water, a capability that could become important during longer missions far from Earth.

Carrying large quantities of medical supplies on missions to the Moon or Mars would add weight and consume limited storage. Producing sterile fluids when needed could reduce those constraints and give crews greater medical independence when rapid resupply or evacuation is impossible.

The vascular studies address another central challenge of long-duration spaceflight. In microgravity, body fluids shift towards the head, muscles weaken and the cardiovascular system no longer works against gravity in the same way it does on Earth. Understanding those changes is essential before agencies send astronauts on longer journeys beyond low-Earth orbit.

Menon’s mission therefore brings together three strands of his career: medicine, engineering and human spaceflight operations. It also carries personal resonance. His wife, Anna Menon, is a SpaceX engineer and flew on the private Polaris Dawn mission in 2024. Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman, who attended Tuesday’s launch, was commander of that flight.

Isaacman’s presence at Baikonur was itself significant. He became the first Nasa administrator in eight years to attend a launch at the Russia-operated spaceport, accompanying Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov as the Soyuz departed.

The visit drew attention because civil spaceflight remains one of the few areas in which Washington and Moscow continue to work closely despite the rupture in relations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The International Space Station cannot easily be separated into independent national sections. American solar arrays generate much of its electricity, while Russian propulsion systems help maintain its altitude and orientation. Crews from both countries also continue to travel aboard Soyuz and SpaceX spacecraft under a seat-exchange arrangement intended to ensure that both sides of the station remain staffed if one launch system is grounded.

That interdependence has survived diplomatic expulsions, sanctions and increasingly sharp disputes over military activity in orbit. It has not eliminated friction. Nasa and Roscosmos have disagreed over air leaks in parts of the station’s Russian segment and over the methods needed to locate and repair them. The concerns have become more pressing as the station ages and approaches its planned retirement soon after 2030.

The launch nevertheless demonstrated that the operational relationship remains intact. Dubrov, who previously spent nearly a year aboard the station, brings long-duration experience to the crew. Kikina is Russia’s only active female cosmonaut and previously flew to the station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in 2022, becoming the first Russian cosmonaut to use the American commercial spacecraft.

Their arrival expanded an already multinational station crew that includes astronauts from Nasa and the European Space Agency as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts.

The mission also restored crewed launches from a Baikonur pad that had undergone repairs following damage associated with an earlier flight. Soyuz remains one of the world’s longest-serving human spaceflight systems and continues to provide Russia with an independent route to the station even as its broader space program faces financial and technological pressure.

For Nasa, sending Menon aboard Soyuz preserves access to a spacecraft that served as the sole means of transporting US astronauts to the station for nearly a decade after the space shuttle was retired and before SpaceX began operational crew flights.

A US military officer and Nasa astronaut travelled to orbit inside a Russian capsule, launched from a Russian-controlled facility, while the two countries remain adversaries across most areas of foreign policy. The symbolism is hard to miss but that does not mean space cooperation has escaped geopolitics.

Prospects for Russia joining Nasa’s Artemis lunar program have faded, while Moscow has moved closer to China on plans for future lunar exploration. The ISS partnership increasingly resembles a legacy arrangement sustained by practical necessity rather than a model for a new era of cooperation. Yet legacy arrangements can still produce valuable work.

The station has been continuously inhabited for more than 25 years and serves as a laboratory for research that cannot be replicated under Earth’s gravity. Its experiments examine human health, biology, materials, robotics and technologies needed for missions deeper into space.

Menon will spend about eight months inside that environment, moving from the physician who advised crews about the risks of spaceflight to the astronaut experiencing those risks directly.

His launch is notable in India because of his family roots, though he was born in Minneapolis and represents the US.

Menon’s achievement belongs principally to his career in American medicine, the military and Nasa. But it also adds another name to a growing group of people of Indian heritage who have reached orbit, widening the cultural reach of a field once drawn from a much narrower pool.

The Soyuz launch lasted only minutes. The more consequential part of Menon’s first flight will unfold over the next eight months through the repetitive, technical work that defines life aboard the station.

There will be experiments, maintenance, medical monitoring and the constant discipline required to keep an aging laboratory functioning hundreds of miles above Earth.