SPACESUITS FOR FUTURE US MISSIONS TO THE MOON UNVEILED BY NASA

Thu 16 March 2023:

Future US astronauts who walk on the moon will do so in sleeker, more flexible spacesuits thanks to NASA’s decision to do away with the bulky white suits Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo astronauts wore 50 years ago.

The first prototype of a brand-new next-generation spacesuit, custom-fitted and equipped for the first astronauts anticipated to return to the Moon’s surface in the coming years, was unveiled by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Wednesday.

At a media and student event hosted by Axiom Space, the future moon-wear was on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA granted the Texas-based company a $228.5 million contract to produce the Artemis spacecraft’s suits. Artemis is NASA’s follow-on Moon program to Apollo.

The Artemis programme aims to return humans to the Moon in late 2025 for the first time since the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972, an initial step towards an eventual voyage to Mars.

The new suits, branded by Axiom as the “Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit” or AxEMU for short, are more streamlined and flexible than the old Apollo suits, with a greater range of motion and variability in size and fit.

The pressurised garment has multiple protective layers, a backpack with life-support systems as well as lights and a high-definition video camera mounted on top of the bubble-shaped helmet.

The next generation spacesuit. @NASA selected @Axiom_Space to develop the suits for the Artemis III mission to the lunar surface. The first prototype was revealed today during an event at Space Center Houston in Texas. https://t.co/qW96kLYIxl pic.twitter.com/icFDxv60IU

— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) March 15, 2023

The “next generation spacesuits will not only enable the first woman to walk on the Moon but they will also open opportunities for more people to explore and conduct science on the Moon than ever before,” NASA’a administrator Bill Nelson said.

NASA said in a statement that the new suits would be tested in a “spacelike environment” prior to their use for the Moon mission.

“Inside of this box are all the parts and the components to keep you alive,” Russell Ralston, deputy program manager for extravehicular activity at Axiom Space, said of the suit’s “portable life support system”.

“You can think of it as like a very fancy scuba tank and air conditioner kind of combined into one,” Ralston said.

Designed to be worn for up to eight hours at a time, the new suits will fit a broad range of potential wearers, accommodating at least 90 percent of the US male and female population, NASA said.