Russian Soyuz rocket launches fresh crew to space station

Physician-astronaut Anil Menon, a former flight surgeon with NASA and then SpaceX who rejoined NASA as an astronaut along with his wife Anna, rocketed into space Tuesday with two Russian cosmonauts for an eight-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

Soyuz MS-29/75S commander Pyotr Dubrov, flanked on his left by cosmonaut Anna Kikina and on the right by Menon, blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. EDT. 

Eight minutes and 46 seconds later, after a smooth climb to orbit, the Soyuz was released for a two-orbit rendezvous with the sprawling lab complex.

While Menon is a space rookie, he’s no stranger to space operations. He met his wife, Anna, while both were working for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, he as a flight surgeon and she as a biomedical engineer and flight controller. Both left NASA in 2018 and went to work for SpaceX.

Menon was the company’s first flight surgeon, helping establish astronaut medical protocols for commercial space flights. His wife worked as a senior engineer and was one of two SpaceX employees who flew to space in 2024 on a five-day Crew Dragon flight chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman, now NASA’s administrator.

Menon left SpaceX and returned to NASA after applying and being selected to join the agency’s astronaut corps in 2021. Anna was selected to join the corps in 2025 and will be available for flight assignment after she completes two years of initial training.

Menon’s family flew to Kazakhstan to attend the Soyuz launch as did Isaacman, his first visit to the complex since taking the reigns at NASA.

“In terms of me and Anna, I would say there was a zero percent chance we thought this would happen, but it does go to show that if you keep working at something, you should never count yourself out,” Anil Menon said. 

“It also goes to show that if you’re interested in being a part of NASA, going to space, there’s a lot of different ways this could work out. There isn’t a set course. Sometimes … if you work hard and consistently over time, the results can be completely shocking. We’ve been absolutely shocked by this.”

Dubrov will monitor the Soyuz spacecraft’s automated approach to the station, ready to take over manual control if needed as the ship glides in for docking at the Earth-facing Prichal module three hours and nine minutes after launch.

Standing by to welcome them aboard were Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, along with Soyuz MS-28/74S commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Andrey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams.

Menon, Dubrov and Kikina are replacing the Soyuz MS-28/74S crew, who were launched to the space station last November. NASA plans to launch a replacement crew for Meir and her crewmates in September.

The fresh Soyuz crew is expected to remain aboard the station for about 260 days, returning to Earth next April. With a few exceptions, station flights have typically lasted for five to six months, but the Russians are now extending visits to eight months to reduce the amount of cargo that has to be shipped up.

And Menon is fine with that.

“We always walk into these missions somewhat prepared for any length of time,” he said before launch. “So I’m going into this willing and excited to spend more time there.”

But he will miss his wife and kids, ages 5 and 8.

“I’m looking for ways to connect with them, because when I Facetime with them, they would give me about five seconds of attention, and then they quickly start playing random things or messing with the phone,” Menon said. “So I’m bringing up some toys, some Lego figurines that will remind me of them, and maybe I can keep them engaged for 10 seconds. We’ll see.”

In an interview with CBS News, he said staying at home with the kids while his wife flew in space was more difficult than he expected. Now that their roles are reversed, both are gaining a better understanding of the challenges faced by both.

“When we talk about what it was like for her to launch and me to be on the ground, I think that was the harder job, and I found it really stressful,” he said. “I was worried about her and the kids, and there were certain challenges related to that.

“I’m able to share that perspective with her, so I’m like, hey, heads up, like it’s going to be a lot easier for me to do this launch.”

For her part, he added, “she’s got insight into what that’s like (to fly in space) and what the launch might be like, and how to make it meaningful. … We’ve talked a lot about that. I think, like, either side of this, my side and her side, hopefully we’re better off, and we understand each other a bit better.”

Menon is part of the Soyuz crew under an agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, that calls for at least one NASA astronaut to launch aboard each Soyuz and one cosmonaut to go up aboard each SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The agreement ensures at least one American and at least one Russian are always aboard the station to operate their respective systems in case a Soyuz or Dragon has to depart early because of a medical emergency or some other major problem.

Menon said he was lucky to be flying with space veterans like Dubrov and Kikina. He described his Soyuz commander as “kind of on the quieter side, really intellectual, really sharp.”

“He speaks incredibly good English, and he’s into Rubik’s cubes and esoteric science fiction. He’s read the Foundation series (by) Isaac Asimov, and Murderbot before the TV shows made those things popular. We really hit it off, because I love science fiction, too, and that’s super cool.”

As for Kikina, who first flew to space aboard a Crew Dragon in 2022, Menon described her as “100 percent full on energy, and really adds a lot to our team because me and Pyotr are a bit more quiet, and so it’s really cool to have her just like keep the engine running and moving us along.

“And she’s an athlete, like a rafter boater, she was on the Russian version of American Gladiator — it’s called Titan — and won that easily. And so it’s a cool crew, an interesting, fun crew to be a part of as well. They’ve also flown to space, so I got a lot to learn and pick up from them, and it’s a good spot to be in.”