Placeholder while loading article actions
NASA wants new space suits to replace the old, bulky ones that its astronauts have worn for more than 40 years as long as they venture into the void of space: the suits not only protect astronauts, but also provide more mobility and can use both. for space walks and on the surface of the moon.
On Wednesday, NASA hit a milestone in a sometimes tortured trip to produce this suit, announcing design and production contracts to two companies, Axiom Space and a team led by Collins Aerospace. In total, the contracts could have a total value of $ 3.5 billion by 2034, NASA said. The costumes should be ready for testing on the space station in a few years.
“The story will be made with these costumes,” Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said Wednesday during a news conference. “When we get to the moon, we will have our first person of color and our first woman who will carry and wear these dresses in space.”
Last year, the Office of the Inspector General of NASA issued a report on the problems of NASA in its efforts to design new space suits, saying they would delay their return to the lunar surface. The space agency had spent 14 years working on next-generation suits, according to the report. In 2016, NASA consolidated two costume designs into a single program, but had already spent $ 200 million on the program.
NASA has a new challenge to reach the moon: its space suit program
The report noted that space suits aboard the International Space Station “have exceeded their design lifespan by more than 25 years, which requires costly maintenance to ensure the safety of astronauts.” NASA last designed a new space suit 40 years ago.
On Wednesday, Dina Contella, NASA space station’s operations integration manager, said the existing suits “have been the workhorse for the agency for 40 years” and have been used in 169 space exits. But he added that “space suit technology, of course, is aging at 40, so we would like to try new technologies in the future.”
Current outfits do not suit all body types either. In 2019, NASA astronaut Anne McClain canceled the realization of what would have been the first all-female spacewalk outside the space station after deciding that the space suit was too big for her. This sparked a wave of criticism that NASA was not accommodating its female astronauts in a program that had long been dominated by men.
New outfits should be able to fit a wide range of body types, from women in the 5th percentile by size to men in the 95th percentile, NASA said.
By choosing a couple of private companies to build the costumes, NASA is once again relying on a growing commercial space sector that has played an increasingly important role in human exploration. Private companies, such as SpaceX, are now flying cargo and crew to the space station. Houston-based Axiom Space is also working to build a commercial space station that would eventually replace the International Space Station.
“We have a number of clients who would already like to do a space walk and we planned to build a suit as part of our program,” said Mike Suffredini, President and CEO of Axiom. “And so it’s great to have a partnership where we can benefit from NASA’s years of experience.”
Collins said he also wants his next-generation suit to be more modern than his predecessors.
The suits should not “feel like a spaceship, but like a sturdy set of extreme sports outerwear,” said Dan Burbank, a senior technical researcher at Collins Aerospace and a former NASA astronaut. “That should be the goal.”