Meet Anna Menon: SpaceX engineer and medical officer
Anna Menon was “completely surprised” when Jared Isaacman told her she’d be part of the Polaris Dawn crew in 2021.
“Absolutely never would have seen this coming in my entire life,” she told CNN in August.
But as a lifelong space enthusiast, she always hoped she’d have a shot at extraterrestrial adventure.
Menon has a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University and she put in a seven-year stint at NASA, working as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station.
After switching to a role at SpaceX, she served in mission control during some of the company’s highest-profile missions, including 2020’s Demo-2 — the inaugural crewed flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule that returned astronaut launches to US soil for the first time in a decade.
Her expertise is a key reason Isaacman brought her on to this high-stakes mission.
Notably, her husband — Anil Menon — was selected as a NASA astronaut mere days before Anna learned she would join Inspiration 4. (Anil has not been assigned to his first mission.)
It was an absolute whirlwind of a week in our household,” Anna Menon said. “I called him up right after I got out of the meeting with Jared, and I just remember his reaction being extreme shock and such excitement — over the moon excited.”
Menon will serve as the Polaris Dawn mission’s medical officer.
If space adaptation syndrome — a type of severe motion sickness that can strike astronauts — hits the crew, it will be up to Menon to administer medication to alleviate those symptoms
No comments: