It started with a lab report question. In 2023, aerospace engineering and chemistry student Mei He was sitting through a microgravity lab at university when the final question landed: propose something else to test in microgravity. She was on her period at the time, and the question that followed was obvious once she thought to ask it — how do astronauts actually manage menstruation in space?
“I looked it up, and there were more pop culture articles talking about the lack of data on menstruation in space than actual papers about it,” she says, who enjoys hiking and knitting in her spare time.
What she found was a gap dressed up as a non-problem. Astronauts either use disposable products, which produce waste on missions where waste is expensive and hard to manage, or they go on hormonal contraceptives to suppress their periods altogether. It’s a workaround that holds for a fortnight in low orbit — but not for a mission to the Moon, and certainly not for one to Mars.
“A menstrual cup is a reusable product on Earth because it’s literally a cup,” Mei says. “Imagine trying to remove it without gravity — it would get quite messy.”
The idea sat in the back of her mind for two years, through a move from the central coast of NSW to Adelaide midway through her degree, and into industry, where she spent years in Australia’s satellite sector. Then, in January this year, she used a spare weekend to enter the Actuation Space Hackathon, run by the European and French space agencies. In 24 hours, she designed a menstrual cup that doesn’t rely on gravity to use — paired with a closed-loop system that repurposes menstrual fluid as a nutrient for plant growth.
“Nothing produces waste within that system,” she says. “Everything gets used.”
The team, which Mei ran solo, won the Australian round, then placed in the global top five in France. It was there that people started telling her to build it into a real product. What followed was the company now known as THE RED PLAN-ET — “the ET stands for extraterrestrial,” she says. “I was quite proud of myself when I thought of that.”
From orbit to Earth
Space hardware is a slow, expensive market to sell into, and Mei is candid about it. “There’s not a huge market for period products in space — I think we’re quite early to the game,” she says. But designing for zero gravity produced something with an obvious Earth-side use: a non-spill menstrual cup that doesn’t need a clean bathroom to empty or manage.
“It can help reduce the barriers that menstruation poses — from the most extreme environment, like space, to the most mundane. If you’re on a hike on the weekend and you don’t have access to a clean bathroom to change a pad or tampon, or to dispose of the waste.”
She’s also looking at postpartum care, where some new mothers need to change a pad every hour through the night while recovering from birth — though she notes hospitals aren’t set up for reusable products the way an individual consumer might be.
“Why are we pursuing space activities?” she asks. “Ultimately it’s to make our lives better, and to bring benefit back down to Earth.”
Adelaide University’s Venture Catalyst program
THE RED PLAN-ET is one of fourteen South Australian startups selected for Adelaide University’s Venture Catalyst program, now in its eleventh year. The six-month accelerator, run through the university’s Innovation & Collaboration Centre, gives early-stage founders workshops, one-to-one mentoring, university resources and industry access to help build investment-ready businesses.
Adelaide University Associate Director of Business Incubation Craig Jones says the 2026 cohort captures the range of South Australia’s startup scene.
“There’s a real diversity of ambition in this cohort, from founders rethinking how we manage water and climate data from space, to an art historian building tools that could help galleries reach new audiences,” he says.
“What they share is a genuine willingness to learn and adapt, and that’s ultimately what determines who succeeds.”
Mei sits within the Venture Catalyst Space stream, backed by the South Australian Space Industry Centre, alongside companies like EOI Space, founded by Murali Krishna, which is building low-flying satellites for near real-time Earth observation used in defence, emergency response and infrastructure planning.
“We became aware of the Venture Catalyst program through the South Australian innovation ecosystem and recognised it as an ideal platform to refine our solution, build partnerships and scale a globally relevant, space-enabled business from South Australia,” Krishna says.
Other space-stream founders are working on edge AI, materials resilience, agricultural mapping and secure offline systems, while the broader Venture Catalyst cohort spans cardiometabolic screening, construction software, cybersecurity and social-impact art platforms.
Since launching in 2015, the Innovation & Collaboration Centre has supported more than 150 startups and 239 founders, who together employ at least 577 people and have added $39 million to the South Australian economy this year. The program itself has provided almost $1.2 million in early funding, which those startups have turned into more than $116 million raised from other sources.
Building it alone
For now, THE RED PLAN-ET is a company of one. “Right now, it’s just me,” Mei says matter-of-factly, without any of the padding people often reach for when admitting they’re doing something big without a team behind them yet.
It’s also, unmistakably, a story about who gets to be in the room. Mei describes growing up as one of the only girls in her STEM classes from around age 15, then through university, then into the satellite industry. “It never really was that hard to get into a room or to get people to talk to you, because I was in that in the moment,” she says.
“I think I’m now starting to realise there were barriers in place — I just didn’t notice them so much because that was all I knew.”
She hasn’t yet crossed paths with Australian of the Year and astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg, though the two have met briefly before, back when Mei’s work was still a hackathon idea rather than a startup. “Space Forum is next week,” she says, “so there’s a non-zero chance I’ll run into her there.”
Given how small Australia’s space sector is, it probably won’t be the last time their paths cross.
More info: Now in its 11th year, the Innovation & Collaboration Centre’s Venture Catalyst program supports earlystage founders to plan, build and grow sustainable, globally scalable and investment-ready businesses.
The six-month program includes workshops, one-to-one mentoring, access to university resources,
industry expertise and events designed to support business development.
About THE RED PLAN-ET
Around 26 per cent of the human population menstruates — and menstruation remains a barrier to participation, from the most extreme environment (humans living and working in space) to the most mundane (going on a hike on the weekend back on Earth). Founded in 2026, THE RED PLAN-ET is an Adelaide-based startup reducing those barriers by building a reusable menstrual product that is zero-waste, doesn’t require access to a clean bathroom, and works in microgravity.
About Mei He
Mei He is the founder of THE RED PLAN-ET, a menstruation solution originally designed for long-duration space missions, with applications on Earth across FemTech, remote industries, and environments with limited sanitation access. Mei began studying Aeronautical (Space) Engineering Honours and Advanced Science (Chemistry) at the University of Sydney, where she was Co-President of Sydney Women in Aerospace Engineering, before transferring to Adelaide University, where she continues her studies. She has spent several years working across the Australian space industry, and has been Co-Founder of the Australian Space Diversity Alliance since 2024.
How You Can Support Mei’s Work
Have you used a menstrual cup — or tried and stopped? Mei is running a quick survey to help refine the product design. It takes under a minute: forms.gle/L3L7gz4uRD31pjf77
More info here: https://icc.adelaide.edu.au/programs/venture-catalyst/
