Understanding the influence of the hormonal cycle in the female body, including mood, emotions, and thinking, is a powerful tool for decision-making and working efficiently. Applying this knowledge allows space missions to be planned in harmony with each astronaut’s cycle instead of assuming a male baseline to better anticipate when someone may be better prepared for high-stakes tasks or intense teamwork. This project consists in three parts: (1) track the hormonal cycle, (2) reuse menstrual blood in space as a potential fertilizer for plant growth, which is in line with sustainability and in collaboration with Hospital Sant Pau, and (3) test the feasibility of menstrual cup use in an analogue space mission, which is in collaboration with AstroCup*. The mission mostly focused on part (2), where Dr. Martínez germinated white beans aboard the station, which were planted and grown using menstrual blood as a fertiliser, while some served as controls to monitor potential growth differences.
*AstroCup is a team of scientists and engineers whose main goal is to provide a choice of menstruating medical devices for space missions contributing to equal access to space. So far, they have tested how menstrual cups resist a 3 km flight on a rocket.
