SpaceX engineer Anna Menon is preparing to travel further into the cosmos than any astronaut has gone in decades as part of this summer’s groundbreaking Polaris Dawn mission.
Polaris Program / John Kraus
Anna Menon (right) and the Polaris Dawn crew on a zero-gravity research flight in 2022.
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A crew of four is preparing to launch a SpaceX rocket, where they will perform the first all-civilian spacewalk outside the ship and conduct more than 40 experiments.
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Engineer Anna Menon will also read her book among the stars Kisses from Space St. Raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
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“We hope to inspire future generations to dream bigger and reach for the stars,” says crew member Sarah Gillis
On any given night at Anna Menon’s Houston home, the 38-year-old mother and her 6-year-old son, James, perform a ritual that combines Menon’s passion for space with the parents’ need to put their oldest child to sleep.
“James came up with this,” he says.
“She asked me to throw her towards her bed, so I grabbed her legs and we counted down: 10, nine, eight… Then we hugged as I pushed her towards the top bunk bed and told her goodnight.”
In the coming weeks, James, along with his sister Grace, 3, and their father Anil, 47, will watch SpaceX mission specialist and paramedic Menon perform an adult version of the night’s entertainment.
From the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he and three other crew members (Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, and Sarah Gillis) ventured deeper into the cosmos (870 miles, to be precise, further than any other since Gemini 11’s liftoff in 1966).
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Courtesy of Polaris Dawn
Anna Menon with her husband Anil and children James and Grace.
“This is a stepping stone,” Menon says. “It helps develop technologies that will bring humans closer to Mars and beyond.”
This is not the only purpose. While floating among the stars, Menon said, “I will read a children’s book I wrote, Kisses from Spaceto both my children and St. “To some brave kids at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,” he says livestream to raise funds for the Tennessee-based healthcare facility that focuses on childhood cancer and other pediatric diseases.
A previous SpaceX flight, Inspiration4, brought in more than $250 million, and Menon says they want to add to that: “We can make great advances for our collective future, but we can also solve problems here on Earth today.”
Penguin Random House
The cover of the children’s book “Kiss from Space”, which Menon will read to children around the world during his mission.
During Polaris Dawn’s five-day journey, funded and commanded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Isaacman, the crew will attempt the first all-civilian spacewalk outside the ship and conduct more than 40 experiments to help understand the effects of spaceflight. radiation on humans.
“The Inspiration4 and now the Polaris program missions are very small steps toward opening this last great frontier,” says Isaacman, 41. “We have so much to learn… The answers are there and so much more. We just need to get out there and explore. Who knows what we’ll find?”
Floating outside Dragon capsules in the inky black vastness of space is an experience that Gillis, 30, a crew member and SpaceX engineer, is particularly looking forward to.
“Completing this spacewalk will test our training and teamwork, but we are ready,” he says.
Menon, a 50-year-old retired Air Force lieutenant colonel-turned-SpaceX pilot, and Poteet will remain inside the capsule during the spacewalk, but all four will be exposed to space.
“We hope to inspire future generations to dream bigger and reach for the stars,” says Gillis.
Polaris Dawn hasn’t finalized its launch date yet, but it’s not planning to launch any earlier than this summer. The expedition was delayed for several years as the team tried to fine-tune the dizzying array of technology they would need, including the suits they would wear outside their capsule as they traveled at 17,500 miles per hour in temperatures ranging from 250 degrees below zero to above 250 degrees. . (They won’t feel the speed the same way as on Earth.)
Past astronauts have recounted an interesting detail from their journeys, insisting that space sometimes smells like gunpowder or burnt food. “I’ll let you know when we get back,” says Menon.
Polaris Program / JOHN KRAUS
Anna Menon is in the cockpit.
The trip is the culmination of what he calls a “childhood dream” that began with a fourth-grade school trip to Houston’s NASA Johnson Space Center.
Menon then spent seven years at the famed agency, serving as a biomedical engineer in mission control before heading to SpaceX, where he was selected to become an astronaut in 2022.
“I’m incredibly proud,” says her husband, Anil, a veteran NASA and SpaceX flight surgeon and astronaut. “Being around him, watching this journey, was incredible.”
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