Anil Menon, a NASA flight surgeon, felt crushed nine years ago when his hopes and aspirations collapsed around him.
For the fourth time, he had diligently applied to become an astronaut with the American space agency, seeking to fulfill his lifelong dream. Although he made it to the final round, NASA again rejected his application at the end of the grueling process.
“I was very sad and admitted defeat,” Menon said. “I just didn’t see a way forward. So I pretty much, at that point, gave up on being an astronaut. I thought there was a zero percent chance.”
He was 39 years old. In 2017, Menon was already half a decade older than the average age of those selected to become astronaut candidates. He felt a door closing and, looking for a new one to open, he spent time thinking deeply about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
His life was not without adventures until that moment, far from it. An emergency physician by training, Menon had practiced medicine on Mount Everest, provided aid in Port-au-Prince after a devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and conducted search and rescue missions with the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
As he considered what would come next, Menon wrote daily in a journal about his passions, purposes, and principles. Finally, he decided on space medicine. If he couldn’t go to space, he would help others do it. And collectively, humanity would advance. “I needed that to be very clear in my mind,” Menon said.
It had to be this way, because Menon and his wife Anna were about to make momentous decisions. Decisions that would ultimately culminate in not one of them, but both of them, going into space.
Faced with a difficult decision
After spending his childhood in the Midwest, Menon studied at Harvard University (neurobiology) before attending Stanford University to earn a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and, in 2006, a medical degree. He worked as an emergency room doctor in Los Angeles. He also joined the Air National Guard, became a pilot and worked as a medic on search and rescue helicopters in Afghanistan.
