by Spacesuits made privately for NASA lunar astronauts could reach a major design milestone this year.
Officials with Axiom Space, the company that makes spacesuits for the Artemis program, said on Monday (January 22) that the garments could achieve critical design review early. In fact, that review could happen as early as June. However, the news comes just two weeks after NASA was forced to delay its astronaut touchdown plans by an additional year. Currently, landings are expected to occur no earlier than 2026.
The new generation of lunar fashions should allow Artemis astronauts more flexibility than the bunny-hopping Apollo crews of the 1960s and 1970s, who worked with stiff fabric. But the trick of safely dressing the Artemis explorers was a scheduling concern; the earliest was announced by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in 2021. The department had warned that NASA’s overall spacesuit development program did not allow for a moon landing in 2024 (the goal at the time). NASA added an extra year for landing preparation to the 2025 goal.
Progress has since been made with two private vendors, but continued technical delays to the spacesuits, SpaceX’s Starship lander and the Artemis 2 crewed round-the-moon mission forced NASA again this month to push back the Artemis 3 landing to no earlier than 2026. — a decision officials say they took seriously to meet safety requirements.
Related: Astronauts won’t walk on the moon until 2026 after NASA delays the next two Artemis missions
NASA has a long history of post-Apollo lunar spacesuits; the agency had at least three internal programs between 2007 and 2021, for example, according to the OIG report. The latest of the programs, aimed at Artemis, was the Exploration External Mobility Unit (xEMU), but progress on that has been delayed by “funding shortfalls, the impact of COVID-19, and technical challenges ,” the report said.
NASA then immediately abandoned its lunar space plans to seek private vendors, finding design teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace in June 2022. The companies began competing for a lucrative series of task orders worth $3.5 billion together at most “performance period” through 2034, per agency matters. The first task order, for the Artemis 3 lander, was awarded to Axiom Space in September 2022 with a base value of $228.5 million.
Axiom Space unveiled its Axiom External Mobility Unit (AxEMU) prototype in a live-streamed event in March 2023, although that version was obscured by a colorful layer to hide proprietary features from the camera. Axiom’s work on AxEMU is continuing with a wide array of industry experts: KBR, Air-Lock, Arrow Science and Technology, David Clark Company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, Sophic Synergistics and APT Research, company officials said at the time.
Unlike the Apollo spacesuits made by ILC Industries, which operated around the lunar equator, Artemis spacesuits must operate in the colder and more remote region of the lunar south pole. This could be when water ice could be present on the moon. Water is critical to a sustainable lunar presence because it can be used for rocket fuel and life support systems, NASA said.
AxEMU will be tested over the next two years in vacuum chambers that can simulate the temperature and lack of atmosphere of space. They will also be demonstrated in underwater conditions at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. That’s where astronauts train for spacewalks, according to Axiom materials.
NASA’s currently active spacesuits, called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), were designed in the 1970s for the space shuttle program and are still in use on the International Space Station for floating spacewalks. The EMU design, not designed for walking or lunar gravity, requires a newer spacesuit for a lunar landing.
The EMU was designed for men (and statistically larger bodies) during an era when no other gender was being recruited into the astronaut corps. Astronaut hiring practices have changed over the past few decades, and NASA continues to strive to improve; that said, replacing spacesuits is expensive.
Meanwhile, very few female astronauts were able to use the AEA suit. Only four spacewalkers were all women, for example.
In their statement, Axiom officials emphasized the company’s plans for its own space suit to “serve a wide range of crew members” and said they are consulting with “various subjects, including engineers and astronauts” to reach the goal achieve that. The AxEMU will also have other advantages, including the ability to work with Axiom Space’s specialized instruments on the lunar surface – and the ability to stand in permanently shadowed regions of the moon for two hours or more.
RELATED STORIES:
– US must beat China back to the moon, Congress tells NASA
— Astronauts won’t walk on the moon until 2026 after NASA delays the next two Artemis missions
— 55 years after Christmas on the moon with Apollo 8, the new Artemis crew is ready to launch (exclusive)
The Artemis program, led by NASA, includes a coalition of more than 30 nations under the Artemis Agreements. A subset of countries are actively funding contributions to moon missions, and others are on board to sign up to NASA-led norms for peaceful space exploration.
Artemis was originally conceived under the Trump administration through a series of space policy directives, accelerating NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon; the program then continued under Biden.
Although it’s been a long time coming, agency officials emphasize putting safety first before any moon landing deadline. However, recent delays in landing NASA astronauts caused concern among some members of Congress this month, who say the Russian-Chinese alliance of nations could reach the moon before the United States.
“I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in sending people to the moon,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, told during live streaming testimony on January. .17.
“The Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking international partners for a lunar mission, a lunar research station, and has stated its ambition to have human astronauts on the surface by 2030,” Lucas added. “The country that lands first will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities are conducted in an open and transparent manner, or in a more restricted manner.”
