SpaceX doctor finally gets his shot to be a NASA astronaut

When astronauts return to Earth, Dr. Anil Menon is often among the first to welcome them home. A lean man, sometimes clad in black SpaceX scrubs and a face mask, he might easily disappear into the background of historic photos.

But look carefully and you’ll notice a dragon peeking out of his sleeve.

The tattoo binds him to his lifelong passion for space. Years ago he stood at the foot of the Space Shuttle Challenger Monument in LA's Little Tokyo. From there, he walked to a tattoo shop named after astronaut Ellison Onizuka, who died in the explosion. Now a beast drapes from his chest to his left arm.

“As Johnny Depp said, my skin is my story,” he told Mashable.

Menon’s getting more looks these days. NASA chose him and nine others out of 12,000 for astronaut training. It was his fifth time applying. Now the man accustomed to pulling astronauts out of a capsule could be on the other side of the hatch.

Recruits from NASA’s 23rd class will report to Johnson Space Center in Houston in January as the agency sets its sights on a lunar landing in 2025.

Dr. Anil Menon, 45, will become one of 10 new astronaut trainees for NASA. Credit: NASA

Many of the candidates have experience in the military. Menon, a 45-year-old father of two, is the only one who is also an ER doctor. Despite an unusual path to the astronaut corps, he always had space on the brain, Menon said, modeling his career after Dr. Scott Parazynski, a physician-turned-astronaut who retired in 2009.

A firm believer in ikigai, a Japanese concept, Menon said his plan was to dedicate himself to a profession that would give him a reason for living. Had he never succeeded in becoming an astronaut, emergency medicine could have fulfilled that sense of purpose. It just so happens that space medicine was more his jam.

When he’s not working a shift at a local trauma center, Menon has been what the industry calls a “flight surgeon,” a specialized doctor assigned to aviation or space crews who oversees their health before, during, and after a mission. These doctors work the console in mission control under the callsign “surgeon,” though it’s a bit of a misnomer: They don’t perform surgery. Rather, these physicians have expertise in microgravity, radiation exposure, G-forces, emergency ejection injuries, and low-oxygen levels.

At age 6, Menon first imagined becoming an astronaut after seeing The Dream is Alive, a documentary on the space shuttle program, sprawled in IMAX at his local science museum in Minneapolis. But he credits his parents, immigrants from Ukraine and India, for instilling a love of exploring. They sent him and his sister to India to visit relatives in the summers.

“When I saw that there was a career in adventure and being able to travel to the most extreme environment of all, I was sold,” Menon said.

He followed his goal from Harvard to Stanford for medical school, and later to the Air Force, where he pursued a residency in aerospace medicine. During his training, he deployed twice with the critical care air transport team to treat soldiers. He has kept his medical skills fresh by working some Friday and Saturday shifts at California Hospital Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Along the way, he’s packed in some unusual life experiences. Through studying wilderness medicine at Stanford, for instance, he was able to care for climbers on Mount Everest. He also was a first responder during two earthquakes — one in Haiti in 2010 and another in Nepal in 2015.

SpaceX medical director Anil Menon accompanies NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken after SpaceX Dragon Demo-2 landing Aug. 2, 2020. Credit: Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images

Menon started with NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014 — aka the year of the dragon tattoo. As he entered the tech world, his intention was to keep his body art under wraps.

Instead, it became one of the last images some would see before they left the planet.

In the run-up to a Soyuz launch in Russia, the astronauts wanted to borrow Menon’s Apple TV. What he didn’t realize was his phone was syncing photos to their screensaver.

Who doesn’t have a few personal photos on their phones they’d rather their colleagues not see?

“They were like sitting around for weeks before their launch watching movies, and screensavers came up with this tattoo,” he said, remembering when they razzed him. “NASA is a very accepting, multicultural place, so it just helped me ease into being part of the team.”

But the tattoo, which took 30 hours to stipple across his body, was more fitting for his next employer: SpaceX’s Dragon was the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to go to and from orbit.

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Menon became the company’s first lead flight surgeon and directed its medical program. He had been preparing for the role for years — even wrote his thesis on medical kits for commercial spaceflight.

In order for people to go on extended missions to the moon or Mars, traditional kits, which previously included basic medicines and monitoring equipment, must advance, he said. New technology will enable those long-duration voyages. There are now ultrasounds small enough to fit in a pocket and connect to a smartphone.

“Before, we'd have zero insight into you, and we'd say, ‘Oh, you’ve got abdominal pain, maybe take some of this pain medicine and let's make sure you don't have appendicitis and maybe we'll start an antibiotic,’” he said. “But now we can actually put that ultrasound on your right lower quadrant and see what your appendix looks like on your iPhone and telemeter that data back.”

Menon played a key role in helping SpaceX stay on track during the pandemic. Despite lockdowns and illnesses, the company kept its timeline to launch Demo-2, the first manned test flight, and Crew-1, the first operational manned flight, in 2020.

As Menon makes his return to NASA, his wife, Anna Menon, will remain at SpaceX. The couple used to sit two cubicles apart. In April, she’ll serve as the mission director for Crew-4, a six-month research mission at the International Space Station.

His dream assignment is to fly to Mars, a destination that is probably a decade or more out of reach. He knows he’s far more likely to end up in low-Earth orbit, doing research at the space station, a critical testbed for the next generation of astronauts who will penetrate deep space.

Regardless of where he’s headed, the dragon under his spacesuit could be in for the G-force ride of its life. And by then, it may have company — another tattoo to commemorate the occasion of his joining the NASA astronaut corps. It’s the pinnacle of his life, he said.

But how to choose when the sky is no longer the limit?

“If you have any good ideas,” he said, “I’ll take them.”