People of the State celebrated and felt proud as Kerala-origin NASA astronaut Anil Menon flew to ISS on Tuesday.

He is the great-grandson of former State Congress chief Sir C. Sankaran Nair.

Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar congratulated Mr. Menon, whose roots lie in the Ottapalam, Palakkad district.

In a Facebook post, Mr. Arlekar said that he was fortunate to have visited Mr. Menon’s ancestral home last year to pay tributes to his great-grandfather.

“Hearty congratulations and best wishes to Anil Menon, the pride of Kerala, in his historic space odyssey. I have had the fortune of visiting his ancestral home, Chettur House at Ottappalam, a year back, to pay tributes to Anil Menon’s great-grandfather, late Sir C Sankaran Nair,” he said.

Mr. Menon took off for the International Space Station (ISS) onboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft as part of Expedition 74.

Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan congratulated Mr. Menon on his achievement last Saturday and had termed his journey to the ISS as a “truly historic milestone” for the State.

Born in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants, Mr. Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a U.S. Space Force colonel. During his stint with the U.S. Air Force, he served on the frontlines in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and also worked for the Himalayan Rescue Association, caring for climbers on Mount Everest.

Mr. Menon is the son of K.P. Shankaran Menon and Elizabeth, an immigrant from Ukraine to the U.S.

Mr. Menon, 49, has also spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support Polio vaccination initiatives.

He began his career at NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014 and worked with astronauts living and working on the International Space Station. Menon joined SpaceX in 2018, where he started the company’s medical programme, helped prepare for its first human space flights and worked closely in the development of Starship, the super heavy rocket and spacecraft for undertaking missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

He was selected as NASA astronaut in December 2021 and joined the two-year training programme the following month.

Mr. Menon’s wife Anna Wilhelm had travelled to space in September 2024 as part of Polaris Dawn, a private crewed spaceflight operated by SpaceX. The spaceflight lasted for nearly five days.