Astronaut Alum Kicks Off Duke SPACE Initiative

Marie Claire Chelini, Trinity Communications

"Duke" patch on the window of a spaceship
A Duke patch accompanied astronaut Anna Menon to space on the Polaris Dawn mission. (Photo courtesy of Menon)

The Duke SPACE Initiative (Science and Policy to Advance Cosmic Exploration) celebrated its successful launch on September 8, 2025, with an event combining ongoing research, views from space and the most traveled Duke memento in history.

Scolnic and Troxel standing at podium introducing speakers at SPACE Initiative launch
Directed by Dan Scolnic and Michael Troxel, the Duke SPACE initiative unites hard science with policy-making to shape human exploration of the cosmos from deep-sky cosmology to the geopolitics of Mars. (John West/Trinity Communications)

“The SPACE initiative unites physicists, engineers, biologists, economists, historians, medical professionals, lawyers — maybe a psychologist, if you’ll have me one day,” said Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Dean Gary Bennett, with a smile. “Together, they’re going to explore the sciences of the cosmos, the technologies that will enable that discovery and the policies that will guide our shared future in space.” 

“I am literally over the Moon about the launch of the Duke SPACE Initiative,” said Duke Provost Alec Gallimore. “This is a bold and audacious way of using our superpower of interdisciplinarity. And it’s really a perfect example of what makes Duke amazing: a group of enterprising people came together and said, ‘We think we have the tools to do something a little different here at Duke.’ And I’m just thrilled.” 

Few keynote talks have been as perfectly matched to the initiative it announces as Duke alumna and astronaut Anna Menon’s keynote, who gripped the attention of the audience as she described her career trajectory and her experience aboard the “furthest work trip” she ever took. 

Menon, who holds a master’s in Biomedical Engineering from the Pratt School of Engineering, worked for seven years at NASA and later seven years at SpaceX. In September 2024, almost exactly a year prior to her talk, she was part of the Polaris Dawn mission, and one of the four crewmates to reach 1,408.1 kilometers above Earth, the highest Earth orbit ever flown. 

Crediting her love of space to her fourth-grade teacher and a field trip to NASA facilities in her hometown of Houston, Menon started her talk by highlighting “the power of an educational moment to transform the trajectory of someone’s life.” She walked the event’s attendees through the intense preparation for and the unimaginable emotions of being an astronaut, as well as the range of goals of a mission such as Polaris Dawn, from testing spaceship capabilities, spacesuit safety, communications pathways and health impacts of space travel.

Anna Menon speaks to the audience while guests raise hands to ask questions
Anna Menon captivates the audience as she described her career trajectory and her experience aboard the “furthest work trip” she ever took. (John West/ Trinity Communications)

To all Duke fans, at the event and far beyond, the mission also had a particularly sentimental outcome: Menon took with her on Polaris Dawn a Duke patch, undoubtedly the furthest a piece of Duke swag has ever traveled from campus. At the end of her talk, she presented the framed memento back, as a gift to the University.

Anna Menon standing in a row with members of the SPACE board
Anna Menon presents the initiative’s board with the most traveled Duke memento in history: the patch that accompanied her to space. (John West/Trinity Communications)

“As I was getting ready to leave, I asked myself: ‘Who was important in paving my way there?’ And it was Duke,” she said. 

Over 20 research teams — comprising faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and Bass Connections teams from across the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke Law and the School of Medicine — presented posters that illustrated the interdisciplinarity celebrated by Bennett and Gallimore and gave the approximately 300 attendees a sense of the wide breadth of research currently taking place at Duke. 

presenter points to poster at SPACE Initiative poster session
A poster session with over 20 research teams illustrated the range of research related to Duke’s SPACE initiative. (John West/Trinity Communications)

“I’ve always believed that when extraordinary colleagues come together with great ideas, Duke is a place where great things can happen,” said Bennett. “And I think we’re seeing that right in the beginning of this great initiative.” 

Bennett highlighted the initiative’s directors, associate professors of Physics Michael Troxel and Dan Scolnic. “They’re pretty good at what they do,” he said, citing their extraordinarily impactful cosmology research and their dedication to undergraduate and graduate education — including their participation in the Arts & Sciences curriculum’s Constellations, through which 50 students were selected to be in a cohort whose classes focus on the question, “What is the Cosmos?” 

Troxel and Scolnic gave the audience an overview of the initiative and emphasized that it builds upon work that is already underway in a diverse array of research groups. “We’re not starting from scratch,” said Troxel.

“We have 40 professors who have been working on space-related topics, and over the last couple of years we’ve found each other, and we’ve realized that we wanted to build something that was more than the sum of its parts,” said Scolnic. 

“It’s a really amazing opportunity for research and our undergrad education to come together,” said Troxel.