Thiruvananthapuram, July 14 -- Indian-American NASA astronaut Dr Anil Menon, a physician, engineer and US Air Force lieutenant colonel with ancestral roots in Kerala, on Tuesday embarked on his first space mission to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the first person of Malayali origin to travel to the orbiting laboratory.
Dr Menon lifted off aboard Russia's Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, alongside Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.
The mission is expected to last about eight months, during which the crew will undertake a series of scientific experiments and technology demonstrations aboard the ISS.
The 49-year-old astronaut belongs to the renowned Palat family of ...