Equipping women to better access, endure & thrive in space.
Adrastea is a youth-led accelerator and collaboration hub dedicated to advancing women in space through research and advocacy.
Sponsor or partner with usWhy Adrastea? Five things that set us apart.
Women across the lifespan. Addressing women’s health at every age, not only among students.
Youth-led, built to scale. Bringing in younger fellows as today’s leaders move on.
Research made accessible. Translating findings through social media, not just paywalled publications.
A unique intersection. Women’s health and space medicine, approached through science, engineering, policy, and media.
Women’s health in space needs more than one kind of expertise. We don’t just identify the gaps. We build the research, projects, and partnerships that close them.
How our work comes together
Study what spaceflight does to women
Hibernation, cycle tracking, and the neuroscience of spaceflight.
Build what is missing
A microgravity menstrual cup, and satellite maps of period poverty.
Change the rules
Menstrual health advocacy, and a voice for under-18s in space policy.
Research divisions
Four divisions, one orbit.
Three research divisions and one media division, pairing young researchers with senior scientists, engineers, and policymakers.
Research division
Health & Physiology
How the female body responds to spaceflight.
Research division
Bioengineering & Technology
Wearable health tech, next-generation spacesuits, and alternatives to menstrual suppression in orbit.
Research division
Policy & Advocacy
Removing the systemic, regulatory, and ethical barriers to women in space.
Media division
One division carries it further.
Scientific Media & Marketing turns research and advocacy into stories that reach the public.
Where do you fit in? Four divisions, one mission.
Health & Physiology
For researchers, clinicians, and students.
Explore
Bioengineering & Technology
For engineers, designers, and biotech minds.
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Policy & Advocacy
For policy, law, and ethics experts.
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Scientific Media & Marketing
For science communicators, writers, designers, and video creators.
Explore
1963 to today
How we got here.
Six decades of women in space, and of the research catching up with them.
1963
First woman in space
Valentina Tereshkova orbits Earth 48 times aboard Vostok 6.
1983
First American woman in space
Sally Ride flies on the Space Shuttle Challenger.
1992
First Black woman in space
Mae Jemison, physician and engineer, flies aboard Endeavour.
1993
Women written into research
A US law requires women to be included in NIH-funded clinical research.
1999
First woman to command a Shuttle
Eileen Collins leads a Space Shuttle mission.
2014
Sex and gender in space
NASA reviews how women’s and men’s bodies adapt to spaceflight, and how thin the data is.
2019
First all-woman spacewalk
Christina Koch and Jessica Meir step outside the International Space Station.
2022
Measuring radiation for women
Two phantom torsos modelled on the female body, Helga and Zohar, fly around the Moon on Artemis I.
2026
Adrastea launches
The next chapter is ours to write. Ad astra, for all.
Institutions we’ve worked with
NASA, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Oxford, Stanford, the University of Arizona, Mayo Clinic, Virginia Tech, Rutgers, and IEEE.
Ad astra,
for all.
Young researchers, senior scientists, engineers, and policymakers. One mission.