Which one of the following statements about Anil Menon is correct?
- (a)He is an engineer who revolutionised organic farming.
- (b)He is a diplomat selected in a UN Peace-Keeping mission.
- (c)He is a physician selected by NASA to be an astronaut.
- (d)He is a star football player.
Correct — C, He is a physician selected by NASA to be an astronaut. Anil Menon is an emergency medicine physician who was selected as a NASA astronaut in December 2021, in the group of ten that NASA designated Astronaut Group 23. Before selection he had worked as a NASA flight surgeon and as the first medical director at SpaceX, where he helped build the medical organisation that supports crewed missions; his training is in wilderness and aerospace medicine and he is also a colonel in the United States Space Force. His father emigrated from Kerala and his mother from Ukraine. He completed initial astronaut training in March 2024, and in July 2026 he flew to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz MS-29 as a flight engineer for Expedition 74 and 75.
- (a)He is an engineer who revolutionised organic farming. — Menon is a physician, not an agricultural engineer, and organic farming has no connection with his work. The option is built to catch a candidate who has heard the name only as an Indian-origin achiever.
- (b)He is a diplomat selected in a UN Peace-Keeping mission. — He holds no diplomatic post and has not served on a United Nations peacekeeping mission. His public service is with NASA and the United States Space Force.
- (d)He is a star football player. — There is no footballer of this description in the news of the period. The sporting option is filler, and it is the easiest to discard once the name is placed in the space programme.
NASA selects astronaut candidates in groups every few years from tens of thousands of applicants. Group 23, announced in December 2021, was the first selection since 2017 and drew heavily on operational and medical experience for missions to the International Space Station and the Artemis programme. Flight surgeons — physicians who look after crew health before, during and after spaceflight — are a recognised route into the corps, since they already understand the physiology of weightlessness, radiation exposure and re-entry. Menon came through that route.
This is a who-is-this-person item, and the reliable technique is to pair the name with the field it appeared in, not with a full biography. The names of Indian-origin figures recur in these papers — Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, Raja Chari, Sirisha Bandla, Anil Menon — and almost all of them belong to spaceflight, so the space option is the first to test. The two details worth holding are that he is a doctor rather than a pilot or engineer, which is what option (c) says explicitly, and that the selection was in December 2021, a few months before this paper. Since then the story has advanced: he completed training in March 2024 and made his first spaceflight in July 2026 aboard Soyuz MS-29.
- Anil Menon is an emergency medicine physician selected as a NASA astronaut in December 2021, in Astronaut Group 23.
- He had earlier served as a NASA flight surgeon and as the first medical director at SpaceX.
- His training includes wilderness and aerospace medicine, and he is a colonel in the United States Space Force.
- His father emigrated from Kerala and his mother from Ukraine.
- He completed initial astronaut training in March 2024 and flew to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz MS-29 in July 2026.
- Mixing up Indian-origin figures in the space news of the period; each has a distinct role and mission.
- Assuming every astronaut is a test pilot. Physicians, geologists and engineers are all selected.
- Treating the December 2021 selection as a flight. Selection, training and a first mission are separated by years.
As a who-is-this-person item, or as a match between individuals and their fields of achievement.
CDS_GK_2021_II_Q1102021Chronologically arrange the following Indian-origin astronauts on the basis of their flying into space starting with the first: 1. Sunita Williams 2. Rakesh Sharma 3. Sirisha Bandla 4. Kalpana Chawla Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- (a) 4-3-2-1
- (b) 2-4-1-3
- (c) 2-1-4-3
- (d) 1-4-3-2
Answer(b) 2-4-1-3
The same roster of names one session earlier, ordered by first flight. Rakesh Sharma in 1984, Kalpana Chawla in 1997, Sunita Williams in 2006 and Sirisha Bandla in 2021 — the sequence that any question about an Indian-origin astronaut sits inside.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Anil Menon, selected by NASA in December 2021, was by profession a
- (a)test pilot
- (b)physician
- (c)geologist
- (d)software engineer
Answer(b) physician — an emergency medicine doctor who had served as a NASA flight surgeon and as the first medical director at SpaceX.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Who among the following was the first Indian to travel into space?
- (a)Kalpana Chawla
- (b)Rakesh Sharma
- (c)Sunita Williams
- (d)Ravish Malhotra
Answer(b) Rakesh Sharma — he flew aboard Soyuz T-11 to the Salyut 7 station in 1984. Ravish Malhotra was his back-up.