NASA Unveils New Spacesuits for Future Moon Landings

For future moon landings, the US space agency NASA is dressing its astronauts anew. NASA presented a prototype of the new space suits together with the US company Axiom Space on Wednesday at an event in Houston, Texas. In late summer, Axiom Space will provide NASA with a first set of suits for training purposes.

The new suits developed in about ten years of work – including helmet, visor, boots and a kind of backpack – offer better protection against the harsh conditions in space and better flexibility for the astronauts than the previous ones, it said. The astronauts could bend down or squat better, for example, to pick up stones from the lunar surface. Chief engineer Jim Stein even demonstrated lunges and squats with the suit at the event.

Suits become white in action

On the helmet cameras and lamps are attached, in the so-called backpack there is a life support system, which has been described as a kind of "mixture of very fancy diving tank and air conditioning". The prototype of the spacesuit is black, with orange, blue and white applications. However, to protect astronauts from extreme temperatures on the moon, the final spacesuits will be white.

The spacesuits that NASA astronauts currently wear during field missions on the ISS were introduced about 40 years ago, at that time still for the space shuttles. Incidents in which water accumulated in helmets during outdoor operations were always a cause for concern. Among others, the German astronaut Matthias Maurer was affected. The development of new spacesuits had been planned for a long time, but had been delayed due to various problems. NASA had commissioned the US company Collins Aerospace to develop new space suits for the ISS.

The new suits from Axiom Space will be used primarily for the "Artemis" mission. With the program named after the Greek goddess of hunting and the moon, according to mythology twin sister of Apollo, a woman and a non-white person are to land on the moon for the first time, in the distant future flights to Mars are planned. The moon landing is targeted for 2025.