Without limits: Hypatia Mars demonstrates that space exploration also has a woman's name

Let's close our eyes and imagine an astronaut floating in the immensity of space. How do we draw him? Often, as a white, American man. This seemingly innocent exercise reveals the extent to which the collective imagination is still marked by stereotypes. Precisely to break these schemes, Hypatia Mars was born exactly five years ago. On February 11, 2021, coinciding with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, astrophysicist Mariona Badenas-Agustí and science communicator Carla Conejo González founded the association with a clear objective: to promote the participation and leadership of women in space exploration and demonstrate that, when it comes to reaching space, there are no limits or genders.

February 11 is not a random date. Since 2015, the United Nations has dedicated this day to making female role models visible and encouraging scientific vocations among girls and adolescents. A mission that Hypatia Mars shares, paving the way to outer space, a field still predominantly dominated by men. More than sixty years after the first manned space flight —when in 1961 Russian pilot Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit around Earth with the Vostok spacecraft—, only one in ten people who have traveled to space were women, and none of the twelve astronauts who have set foot on the Moon were.

In recent years, this inequality has begun to timidly reverse: more than 75 women have traveled outside Earth and in 2019 the first exclusively female space passage occurred, starring NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. This year, in addition, the Artemis II mission aims to make Koch the first woman to orbit the Moon, although still without stepping on it.

Despite these advances, inequality persists in space, a gap that goes beyond the symbolic representation of women and that conditions the way missions are designed and prepared, mainly conceived for male bodies. It is in this context that Hypatia Mars is born, with the will to change this perspective: making female role models visible and promoting research with a gender perspective, investigating, for example, the effects of traveling to space on female bodies. They do this through analog missions, that is, two-week expeditions to stations that reproduce living conditions on Mars or the Moon, marked by isolation, confinement, limited resources, and outdoor excursions that require simulated spacesuits.

Names that light the way

The name of the association pays homage to Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer from Ancient Greece, considered the first female scientist in history. Hypatia is one of the few female scientists who has managed to transcend the passage of centuries. And, even today, when women seek female role models to inspire and reflect themselves in, they often have to go back to Hypatia or antiquity, not because there haven't been key women in science, but because many of them have been made invisible or erased from the narrative.

"The problem is not that girls lack scientific vocations, because we are born as blank canvases, but education, society, and context condition us and push us to think that, as women, we cannot go as far," adds Carlota Keimer, aerospace engineer and pilot in training, who will also join the association's new mission. Without women scientists or research with a gender perspective, she warns, "we are invisibilizing 50% of the population". Keimer assures that her role models are women like her maternal grandmother, who, although she wanted to study a scientific career —medicine, in her case— could not pursue her dreams. Invisible but present role models, who inspire these scientists to break barriers and stereotypes.

Hypatia III, the Arctic challenge

In addition to Blay and Keimer, the Hypatia III mission will be made up of a team of ten women, mostly Catalan, of diverse ages and multidisciplinary profiles, ranging from aerospace engineering to biotechnology and scientific communication. Among them are physicist and aerospace engineer Anna Sabaté; doctor in Universe Sciences and researcher in satellite remote sensing Qi Gao; nanotechnologist Lucía Matamoros; or pharmacist specialized in scientific communication Roser Bastida, who will be in charge of documenting the experience at the aerospace station through a collection of poems about life in space.

Also part of the team are aeronautical engineer Laura González; biotechnologist Maria Lastra; aerospace engineer Andrea Jaime, responsible for the mission's international relations; and Marta Milà, medical specialist in nuclear medicine and spiritual health. The team has been selected from more than 80 applications, a clear sign that there is no shortage of women scientists with solid resumes, although visibility is often lacking.

With this crew, Hypatia Mars is already preparing the trip to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), on Devon Island —the largest uninhabited island on the entire planet—, located in the Canadian Arctic. This is a qualitative leap compared to the two previous missions, which took place at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), in the Utah desert (United States). The new station, in the Arctic, offers an even more extreme scenario: sub-zero temperatures, snow, ice, permafrost, and total isolation.

Hypatia's first mission took place in April 2023, becoming the first all-female crew in the State selected by the Mars Society to carry out a mission at the Mars Desert Research Station, a desert area in the United States that simulates the conditions of the Red Planet.

Two years later, in February 2025, Hypatia II delved into the impact of isolation and extreme conditions on the female body, studying strength and muscle mass, nutrition, and the menstrual cycle. Instead of altering the crew members' menstrual cycle —a common practice in many space missions to eliminate menstruation— they found that the menstrual cup was a totally viable alternative, compatible with space suits. This finding not only demonstrated that women do not have to adapt their bodies to male standards during missions, but also opened the door to new possibilities: demonstrating that even menstrual blood could have practical applications outside of Earth, such as fertilizing plants in hypothetical greenhouses on Mars.

Now, with this experience, Hypatia III faces an even more demanding environment: the nearest hospital is no longer four hours away by car, as in the Utah desert, but four hours by plane. The Arctic, therefore, adds a "layer of complexity," according to mission commander Estel Blay, with conditions even more similar to those of the Red Planet: a colder, more isolated environment that requires greater logistical, physical, and mental preparation. In its 25-year history, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station has only hosted about twenty scientific crews, and Hypatia III will be the first analog mission composed entirely of women at this station, as well as the first Catalan team to be established there.

In the Arctic, the crew will expand knowledge about the impact of space missions on the female body, studying physical health, cellular aging, muscle health, and also well-being and spiritual health, analyzing how isolation affects human dynamics and team performance. However, research will not only focus on aspects affecting the female body, but the impact of the findings could be global. Thus, data will be collected on ice melt and ground movements, key information for planning safe infrastructures in extreme conditions both on Earth and, in the future, on Mars.

The crew members will follow a diet designed to improve their biological resilience, because, beyond space, this knowledge has a fundamental objective: that the conclusions drawn in extreme conditions can serve to improve living conditions on planet Earth.

All in all, the underlying objective is clear: "to demonstrate that women can lead not only scientific projects, but also space explorations that transform the world," as highlighted by Qi Gao, researcher at the Telecommunications Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTTC) and member of the mission. A dream that Hypatia Mars has been pursuing for five years: breaking barriers, opening paths, and demonstrating that space knows no limits, nor genders. A purpose that on days like today —coinciding with the International Day of Girls and Women in Science— gains even more strength.