Spacesuits built specifically for NASA lunar astronauts could reach a major design milestone this year.
Officials of Axiom Space, the company that produces spacesuits for the Artemis program, said on Monday, January 22 that the clothes can be produced as spacesuits. Get a critical design review soon. In fact, this review may take place in June. But the news comes just two weeks after NASA was forced to delay astronaut landing plans for another year. As of now, landing is expected to happen before 2026.
The next generation of lunar fashion should give Artemis astronauts more flexibility than the bunny-hopping Apollo crews of the 1960s and 1970s who worked in rigid fabric. But the ability to safely outfit Artemis explorers caused scheduling concerns; the earliest announced by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) in 2021. The department had warned that NASA’s spacesuit development program generally did not allow for a moon landing in 2024 (the target at the time). NASA added an extra year for landing preparation to the 2025 target.
Progress has since been made with two private suppliers, but ongoing technical delays on spacesuits, SpaceX’s Starship lander and the crewed Artemis 2 lunar mission have forced NASA this month to once again push the Artemis 3 landing no sooner than 2026. forced to postpone it to another date. — A decision officials say they made largely to meet safety requirements.
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Post-Apollo lunar spacesuits have a long history at NASA; For example, the agency had at least three internal programs between 2007 and 2021, according to the OIG report. The last of the programs targeting Artemis was the Extravehicular Exploration Mobility Unit (xEMU), but progress on this front has been slowed by “financial shortfalls, impacts of COVID-19, and technical challenges,” the report said.
NASA then turned to soliciting private vendors from its immediate lunar spacesuit plans, securing design teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace in June 2022. The companies began competing for a lucrative set of task orders collectively worth a maximum of $3.5 billion. Performance period” through 2034, according to agency materials. The first task order for the landing of Artemis 3 was issued to Axiom Space in September 2022 with a base value of $228.5 million.
Axiom Space revealed the prototype Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) at a livestreamed event in March 2023, but this version was disguised with a colored overlay to hide special elements from the camera. At the time, company officials said Axiom’s work on AxEMU was ongoing with a number of industry experts: KBR, Air-Lock, Arrow Science and Technology, David Clark Company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, Sophic Synergistics and APT Research.
Unlike the ILC Industries-made Apollo spacesuits, which operated around the lunar equator, the Artemis spacesuits must operate in the colder and more remote lunar south pole region. Potentially, this is where water ice could be found on the moon. NASA said water is key to sustainable lunar existence because it can be used for rocket fuel and life support systems.
AxEMU will be tested over the next two years in vacuum chambers that can simulate the temperature and lack of atmosphere of space. It will also be demonstrated underwater conditions at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. This is where astronauts train for spacewalks, according to Axiom materials.
NASA’s currently active spacesuits, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), were designed for the space shuttle program in the 1970s and continue to be used for floating spacewalks on the International Space Station. The EMU design, which is not suitable for walking or lunar shooting, requires a newer set of spacesuits for moon landings.
The EMU was designed for men (and statistically larger bodies) at a time when no other gender was recruited in the astronaut corps. Astronaut hiring practices changed decades ago, and NASA continues to evolve; However, spacesuits are expensive to replace.
Meanwhile, very few female spacewalkers were able to use the EMU suit. For example, only four spacewalks were entirely female.
In a statement, Axiom officials highlighted the company’s plans for its spacesuit to “accommodate a wide range of crew members” and said it consulted “a variety of subjects, including engineers and astronauts” to achieve that goal. AxEMU will offer other advantages, including the ability to operate on the lunar surface with dedicated Axiom Space vehicles and the ability to survive in permanently shadowed regions of the moon for two hours or more.
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The NASA-led Artemis program involves a coalition of more than 30 countries under the Artemis Accords. While some of the countries are actively funding contributions to lunar missions, others are on board to sign NASA-led norms for peaceful space exploration.
Artemis was first formulated under the Trump administration through a series of space policy directives that accelerated NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon; the program later continued under the Biden presidency.
Even though it has been in the works for so long, agency officials emphasize that safety must come first before the deadline for a moon landing. Still, recent delays in landing NASA astronauts have raised concerns this month from some members of Congress who say the Russia-China alliance of nations could reach the moon before the United States.
“I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in putting a man on the moon,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said during a livestreamed testimony in January. 17.
“The Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking international partners for a lunar mission and a lunar research station and has stated that it aims to have human astronauts on the surface by 2030,” Lucas said. he added. “The first lander will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities will be conducted with openness and transparency or in a more restricted manner.”