2021
Wednesday Wed
PST
Space, the Final Frontier of Remote Health
Alumni to Alumni Speaker Series
Thank you to all who were able to join us as alumnus Dr. Anil Menon discussed aerospace medicine and the research connected to this September’s SpaceX.
SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. In May 2020, SpaceX returned America’s ability to fly NASA astronauts to space on American vehicles for the first time since 2011. In addition to carrying astronauts to space for NASA, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft can also carry civilians to Earth orbit, the ISS or beyond. This fall, SpaceX will launch Inspiration4 – the world’s first all-commercial astronaut mission to orbit. During their multi-day journey, the Inspiration4 crew will conduct in-flight experiments and contribute to biomedical research. This novel commercial space research effort, led by SpaceX and in conjunction with TRISH and other partners, will help pave the way for more frequent scientific research in space. SpaceX is also leveraging its experience in building rockets and spacecraft to deploy Starlink – a global space-based broadband internet system. Unbounded by traditional ground infrastructure, Starlink can deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations around the world where access has been unreliable or completely unavailable, with the potential to transform telehealth and medicine for Earth and space alike.
Alumni Guest Speaker
Anil Menon, MS '04, MD, '06
LtCol. (Dr.) Anil Menon is an actively practicing emergency physician and Medical Director at SpaceX where has worked in a range of remote medical environments and operational environments. He is board certified in Emergency Medicine and Aerospace Medicine and completed a 1-year fellowship in wilderness medicine under Dr. Paul Auerbach. Previously he worked at NASA as a flight surgeon. He has worked at the Gagarin Training Center near Moscow, Guatemala, Sahara desert, Mount Everest, Nepal and Haiti. At SpaceX, he has been working to develop the medical system to enable us to travel to Mars. He is a flight surgeon in the 45th Space Wing and member of the Critical Care Air Transport Team (CCATT). Menon received his undergraduate degree in Neurobiology at Harvard, a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University and his MD degree from Stanford’s School of Medicine.