A Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 14 July 2026 at 10:47 a.m. EDT, initiating an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The craft is scheduled to dock with the station’s Prichal module after a three-hour, two-orbit rendezvous, where the trio will join the seven crew members already aboard for Expeditions 74 and 75. The launch increases the station’s complement to ten and marks Menon’s first spaceflight, while Dubrov and Kikina are on their second.

Menon, a 49-year-old emergency-medicine physician and U.S. Space Force colonel, was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021 after serving as a flight surgeon for both the agency and SpaceX, where he established the company’s medical programme. His wife, Anna Wilhelm, is also a NASA astronaut and flew on the private Polaris Dawn mission in 2024. Menon’s background—born in Minneapolis to an Indian father from Kerala and a Ukrainian mother—has drawn attention in Indian media, and his mission carries a symbolic payload of drawings by Indian schoolchildren, winners of a competition commemorating the 65th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, underscoring cultural and educational ties between India and Russia.

During his stay, Menon will participate in a series of technology demonstrations and physiological studies. He will serve as a test subject for investigations into how microgravity alters blood flow, vein structure and blood composition, and will help test a system that produces intravenous fluids from the station’s potable water—a capability considered relevant for future deep-space missions where medical resupply is limited. Other experiments include refining in-space manufacturing of semiconductor crystals, evaluating AI-assisted ultrasound with augmented reality for autonomous medical diagnostics, and bioprinting vascular tissue to study ageing and regenerative therapies. These are operational research activities aboard the orbiting laboratory, not clinical trials.

Viewed from Washington, the presence of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman at Baikonur—the first visit by a NASA chief in eight years—signals that the crew-exchange agreement between the U.S. and Russia remains functional despite geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine. Moscow, for its part, continues to provide Soyuz seats for American astronauts under the integrated crew framework, with Dubrov commanding the flight. The mission is scheduled to conclude with a return to Earth in April 2027, after approximately 260 days in orbit, extending the typical six-month rotation as Russia moves to reduce cargo resupply requirements.