NASA has selected two space businesses to construct next-generation spacesuits for future astronauts to perform spacewalks and eventually visit the moon’s surface as part of its Artemis program, the agency’s main project to return humans to the lunar surface. Aside from astronauts, these Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace moon suits will be worn by crew members living and working on the International Space Station.
NASA granted the contracts as part of its effort to expand commercial collaborations. ‘With these grants, NASA and our partners will create improved, dependable spacesuits that will allow people to explore the universe like never before,’ said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. ‘By collaborating with industry, we are effectively advancing the required technologies to keep Americans on a successful discovery path on the International Space Station and as we set our eyes on studying the lunar surface’.
NASA’s Artemis program aims to put the first woman and first person of color near the lunar south pole by 2025, with the goal of eventually preparing for crewed flights on Mars. NASA experts have created the necessary safety and technological criteria for the spacesuits.
Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace will design, develop, and potentially manufacture the space station crew and Artemis astronauts’ suits and any essential equipment. The suits should be available by the mid-2020s. The new suits and their capabilities will ‘allow us to explore more of the moon than we have ever done before,’ according to Lindsay Aitchison, programme executive for NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility programme. ‘These skills will be evaluated before our astronauts are employed in space or on the surface of the moon,’ Wyche stated.
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