At age 16, I decided that I was going to become an astronaut.
I had just finished reading Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, and realized that astronauts basically get paid to go to school. From that moment on, it became a dream that I would think about every single day, guiding many of my thoughts, worries, and every-day decisions.
For example, when I wanted lip filler, I couldn’t let myself get it because I wasn’t sure how the filler might migrate under the G-forces of a spaceship launch. Before I found out that astronauts could have ADHD, I delayed seeking a diagnosis out of fear it would disqualify me from the astronaut selection process. And when I got my period at 17 (I was a late bloomer), I immediately became consumed by questions about how I could manage it in space.
Do periods even exist in zero-gravity if gravity’s not pulling blood downwards? If so, do pads even work since they rely on gravity?
Later, I learned that:
- Periods do exist in space – yes, the blood still comes out.
- Lots of female astronauts decide to suppress their periods during missions and,
- Of those who don’t, tampons are the product of choice.
But beyond these basics, I found almost nothing – no detailed research on how menstrual products behave in microgravity, and no improvements on their design for space. In fact, I found out that when American astronaut Sally Ride was preparing for a 10-day space mission while on her period, NASA engineers asked her if she needed 100 tampons.
This gap in knowledge felt familiar, glaring, and deeply unjust. Women’s health research has always been overlooked – whether it is the dismissal of endometriosis as “bad cramps,” the historical diagnosis of “female hysteria,” or even the absurd belief in “wandering womb syndrome" that persisted for over 1000 years. Even today, lack of equity in medical research affects all women, not just women astronauts.
While we’ve moved past such overt absurdities, menstrual health continues to be treated as an afterthought, even though half of the population experiences it. That this neglect extends to one of the most elite and well-resourced fields – space exploration – speaks volumes about how ingrained this issue is.
I realized that waiting for someone else to ask these questions wasn’t enough. If the answers didn’t exist, maybe it was my job to start finding them.
When I came across a competition which invites students to design and test experiments in microgravity, CAN-RGX, it felt like the perfect opportunity to take action. I decided to tackle a question that had nagged me for years: how do menstrual products really behave in space?
With that question in mind, I assembled a team – a group of passionate, curious individuals ready to explore uncharted territory with me. We named ourselves ‘Space MENs’ (short for ‘menstruators’), and together we brainstormed and refined our idea: an experiment to study how droplets of fluid, simulating menstrual blood, behave in a saturated tampon when it is removed from a synthetic vagina in microgravity. A high-frame-rate camera would capture the process, and computer vision algorithms will analyze how the droplets disperse.
The concept is simple: by observing the fluid dynamics in a zero-gravity flight, we aim to provide foundational data that could inform better menstrual product design, or at least the in-flight disposal procedures. It’s a small step towards making space research more inclusive and accessible.
The experimental design had to fit the unique conditions of a parabolic flight – where an aircraft follows a steep climb and dive pattern to create short bursts of weightlessness to simulate microgravity. If our proposal was approved, we would have the opportunity to test our experiment during an actual flight!
And it did. Our proposal was accepted, launching us to the next stage of the competition.
Now, we’re facing an even bigger challenge: turning this experiment into a reality. That means securing funding, building a robot to automate the experiment in removing tampons from synthetic vaginas for consistent data acquisition, and deciding whether to invest in medical-grade models for accuracy or stick with heated sex toys for practicality. Suffice to say, there is a lot to do.
It’s wild to think that a premature concern I had as a 17-year-old has led me here – to designing what is basically an automatic tampon-remover. But even if I don’t become an astronaut and experience a period in space myself, I know that my team’s research still has the potential to shape future Lunar and Mars missions planning.
So if you see a gap that needs to be filled, or have a question that needs answering, don’t wait for someone to answer it. Sometimes, the smallest steps can lead to giant leaps – innovations that don’t just reach the stars but bring us closer to a world where everyone is included in the journey.
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1 Steller, J. G., Blue, R., Zahner, C., & Frisch, E. H. (2021, November 19). Menstrual management considerations in the space environment. ScienceDirect. Source Link
2 Friedman, A. (2014, June 19). Astronaut Sally Ride and the burden of being the first. The American Prospect. Source Link
3 Balch, B., & Writer, S. (2024, March 26). Why we know so little about women’s health. AAMC. Source Link
4 https://seds.ca/can-rgx/
5 Gouvernement du Canada. (2024, July 25). Parabolic flights. Canadian Space Agency. Source Link
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