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Anil Menon cleans up after spacewalk
Menon began his shift collecting his blood sample, spinning it in a centrifuge.
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Staff Reporter - Thu, 20, Aug 2026
- 00:40 EDT
- 34
ANIL MENON / NASA
NASA astronaut Anil Menon, along with a colleague, cleaned up following a 6-hour, 23-minute spacewalk that saw two astronauts uninstall an antenna outside the International Space Station.
The lab residents also continued their microgravity research exploring the circulatory system, studying artificial intelligence and photographing the Earth, NASA said in a statement.
ALSO READ: Anil Menon wraps up second spacewalk
Flight engineers Menon and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency cleaned up after the spacewalk on Aug. 18. During the spacewalk, the duo disconnected a failed high-speed antenna, then secured it with a long-duration tie-down on the orbital outpost’s Z1 truss segment. A spare antenna will be installed in its place on the Z1 during a future spacewalk.
While Adenot was servicing spacesuits on Aug. 19, Menon was in the Columbus laboratory module conducting blood tests and vein scans with assistance from fellow astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway.
Menon began his shift collecting his blood sample, spinning it in a centrifuge, then analyzing the sample with help from Meir. Next, he operated the Ultrasound 3 device and scanned Hathaway’s veins and measured his blood pressure as doctors on the ground monitored in real time. The biomedical activities were part of the Venus Flow investigation, which is exploring space-caused health risks to blood flow.
Expedition 75 spent Wednesday cleaning up after a spacewalk, studying the circulatory system, testing AI tools, and photographing Earth. More... https://t.co/ImXx0Tnenj pic.twitter.com/YarduZMIvv
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) August 19, 2026
Adenot spent a portion of the day inside the Quest airlock refilling spacesuit water tanks that provided cooling to the spacewalkers and their suit systems. Afterwards, station commander Meir of NASA joined her in Quest and helped power down spacesuit components, remove suit batteries and stow the suit hardware. At the end of Wednesday’s shift, the duo joined Menon and NASA flight engineer Hathaway and called down to mission controllers to discuss their experience during the previous day’s spacewalk. All four astronauts had a couple of hours set aside throughout Wednesday to relax after Tuesday’s intense spacewalking and robotics activities.
The space station’s three cosmonauts continued their science and maintenance activities for Roscosmos, their home space agency. The experienced trio focused on human research, advanced technology and Earth observations while maintaining life support systems.
Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrant parents.
Menon was selected by NASA to join the 2021 Astronaut Candidate Class. He reported for duty in January 2022. Menon was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch its first humans into space during the Demo-2 mission and building a medical organization to support human spaceflight during future missions. Prior to that, he served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions aboard the International Space Station.
Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness medicine. As a physician, he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and the 2011 Reno Air Races crash.
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