SpaceX engineer Anna Menon will be among the crew of a singular space mission introduced on Monday by U.S. billionaire Jared Isaacman, who had commanded a human spaceflight mission final yr.
Ms. Menon is a Lead Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, the place she manages the event of crew operations and serves in mission management as each a Mission Director and crew communicator, a SpaceX launch stated.
Mr. Isaacman, the founder and CEO of American fee processing firm Shift4, who had commanded the Inspiration4 mission, introduced the Polaris Programme, “a first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes here on Earth.”
The programme will consist of up to three human spaceflight missions that may show new applied sciences, conduct intensive analysis, and finally culminate within the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship with people on board.
The first mission is known as Polaris Dawn, which is focused to launch no sooner than the fourth quarter of 2022 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Polaris Dawn mission has many first-time aims, so the Polaris Programme selected a crew of specialists who know one another nicely and have a basis of belief they’ll construct upon as they bear the challenges of this mission. Menon is Mission Specialist and Medical Officer.
In addition to Mr. Isaacman, the crew consists of Ms. Menon, a veteran member of Mr. Isaacman’s workforce Scott Poteet and SpaceX worker Sarah Gillis.
During her tenure at SpaceX, Ms. Menon has led the implementation of Dragon’s crew capabilities, helped create the crew communicator operator function, and developed vital operational responses to car emergencies, resembling a hearth or cabin depressurisation.
Anna served in mission management throughout a number of cargo and crew Dragon missions, together with Demo-2, Crew-1, CRS-22, and CRS-23. Prior to SpaceX, she labored for seven years at NASA as a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station.
She is the spouse of Indian-origin doctor Anil Menon, a lieutenant colonel on the US Air Force, who was chosen by NASA in December final yr together with 9 others to be astronauts for future missions.
Anil Menon (45) was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants.
He was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, serving to to launch the corporate’s first people to space throughout NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission and constructing a medical organisation to assist the human system throughout future missions. He beforehand served NASA because the crew flight surgeon for varied expeditions taking astronauts to the International Space Station.
SpaceX stated the Dragon mission will take benefit of Falcon 9 and Dragon’s most efficiency, flying larger than any Dragon mission to date and endeavouring to attain the best Earth orbit ever flown.
“Dragon and the Polaris Dawn crew will spend up to five days in orbit, during which the crew will attempt the first-ever commercial spacewalk, conduct scientific research designed to advance both human health on Earth and our understanding of human health during future long-duration spaceflights, and be the first crew to test Starlink laser-based communications in space, providing valuable data for future space communications systems necessary for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” the corporate stated.
- SpaceX engineer Anna Menon will be among the crew of a singular space mission introduced on Monday by U.S. billionaire Jared Isaacman, who had commanded a human spaceflight mission final yr.
- Ms. Menon is a Lead Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, the place she manages the event of crew operations and serves in mission management as each a Mission Director and crew communicator
- The first mission is known as Polaris Dawn, which is focused to launch no sooner than the fourth quarter of 2022 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
