SpaceX’s Anna Menon to Embark on First All-Civilian Spacewalk

• A crew of 4 is ready to blast off on a SpaceX rocket the place they’re going to try the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk outdoors the ship and perform greater than 40 experiments
• Up within the stars, engineer Anna Menon will even learn her e-book Kisses from House to lift cash for St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital
• “We hope to encourage future generations to dream greater and attain for the celebrities,” crew member Sarah Gillis says

On any given night time at Anna Menon’s dwelling in Houston, the 38-year-old mom and her son, James, 6, act out a ritual that mixes Menon’s ardour for house along with her parental have to get her oldest little one to sleep.

“James got here up with it,” she says.

“He asks me to rocket him into his mattress, so I principally seize maintain of his legs, and we do that countdown: 10, 9, eight … Then we blast off as I push him as much as his prime bunk earlier than I hug him goodnight.”

Within the coming weeks James — alongside together with his 3-year-old sister Grace and their dad, Anil, 47 — will watch Menon, a SpaceX mission specialist and medical officer, carry out a grown-up model of their nightly pastime.

She might be blasting off from the Kennedy House Middle in Florida with three different crew members — Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet and Sarah Gillis — on the Polaris Daybreak, a trailblazing non-public house mission that’s set to fly deeper into the cosmos (870 miles, to be actual) than another because the Gemini 11 took off in 1966.

For extra on Menon and the Polaris Daybreak mission, decide up this week’s PEOPLE, on newsstands now, or subscribe.

“This can be a stepping stone,” says Menon. “It’s serving to to construct applied sciences that can get people nearer to Mars and past.”

That’s not the one objective. As soon as Menon is floating among the many stars, “I’m going to learn a kids’s e-book I wrote, Kisses from House, to each my youngsters in addition to a few of the courageous youngsters at St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital,” she says of a dwell feed to lift funds for the Tennessee-based well being care facility that focuses on childhood most cancers and different pediatric ailments.

A earlier SpaceX flight, the Inspiration4, pulled in additional than $250 million, and Menon says they wish to add to that: “We are able to make big strides for our collective future but in addition tackle the issues right here on Earth in the present day.”

Throughout the Polaris Daybreak’s five-day journey, funded and commanded by Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, the crew will try the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk outdoors the ship and perform greater than 40 experiments to assist perceive the results of spaceflight and radiation on people.

“Inspiration4 and now the Polaris program missions are very small steps within the path of opening this final nice frontier,” says Isaacman, 41. “There’s a lot we stand to study … The solutions are on the market and a lot extra. We simply have to get on the market and discover. Who is aware of what we might discover.”

Floating outdoors their Dragon capsule within the inky-black vastness of house is an expertise that crew member and SpaceX engineer Gillis, 30, is very trying ahead to.

“Finishing this spacewalk will take a look at our coaching and teamwork, however we’re prepared,” she says.

Menon and Poteet, a 50-year-old retired Air Pressure lieutenant colonel-turned-SpaceX pilot, will stay contained in the capsule in the course of the house stroll however all 4 might be uncovered to the void.

“We hope to encourage future generations to dream greater and attain for the celebrities,” Gillis says.

The Polaris Daybreak hasn’t finalized its launch date however is planning for no sooner than this summer time. The expedition was pushed again a number of years because the crew labored to fine-tune the dizzying array of expertise they want, together with fits for the crew to put on outdoors their capsule because it travels 17,500 mph in temperatures starting from 250 levels under zero to 250 levels above. (They gained’t really feel the speed in the identical means as on Earth.)

Previous astronauts have recounted a curious element from their journeys, insisting that house generally smells like gunpowder or burnt meals. “I’ll let you realize,” Menon says, “after we come again.”

The journey is the end result of what she calls a “childhood dream” that began on a fourth-grade area journey to Houston’s NASA Johnson House Middle.

Menon later spent seven years on the famed company, serving as a biomedical engineer in mission management earlier than heading to SpaceX, the place she was tapped to turn out to be an astronaut in 2022.

“I’m extremely proud,” says her husband, Anil, a veteran NASA and SpaceX flight surgeon and astronaut. “It’s been unbelievable to be by her facet, watching this journey.”