People have long dreamed of setting foot on the Moon and other planetary bodies such as Mars. Since the 1960s, space travelers have ventured into the unknown by wearing suits designed to protect themselves from the vacuum of space.
However, the Polaris Dawn mission, which would have included the first spacewalk organized by a private company, was postponed. This is due to difficulties in the design and development of a suitable spacesuit.
Lunar suits are also a key element of NASA’s Artemis lunar program that has yet to be delivered. A report published in November 2023 stated that the contractor making the suits had to reconsider some aspects of the design provided by NASA, which could cause delays.
However, the first spacewalk took place in 1965 by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Then, between 1969 and 1972, 12 NASA astronauts would walk on the lunar surface using technology that would be dwarfed by today’s smartphones. So it’s not unreasonable to ask why it might still be difficult to design and manufacture spacesuits to do the same thing.
A lot has changed since the Apollo missions planted a flag on the Moon. The geopolitical direction driving space travel has changed, and spacesuits are no longer expected to be merely a form of protection. Instead, it is a critical way to increase astronauts’ productivity. This requires rethinking not only the clothes but also the technology that supports them.
A range of powerful telecommunications technologies to connect astronauts to space stations and ground control sit alongside multisensor cameras, temperature readers, and proximity sensors in today’s spacesuits.
Situational awareness – understanding key elements in the environment, such as the astronaut’s health – is a fundamental tenet of modern spacesuit design and is critical to operator safety. In a space where oxygen levels must be constantly monitored, a suit’s ability to track heart rate and other vital signs is important.
Expectations about the risks taken by astronauts have changed for the better. And the level of investment required to produce a spacesuit requires it to be used on future missions that could include a lunar landing in the next few decades.
The trade-off that engineers must make when incorporating wearable technology like those previously mentioned is weight. Will greater situational awareness result in a spacesuit too heavy to move effectively?
When Elon Musk first hinted at challenges with extravehicular activity spacesuits for Polaris Dawn In a presentation to SpaceX employees in JanuaryWhat he was discussing wasn’t the challenges of connected technology, but redesigning “the suit so you can actually move around in it.”
situational awareness
However, when talking about mobility in a spacesuit, you need to consider the tasks you want that mobility to support.
Before the advent of modern spacesuits, Apollo astronauts had difficulty performing missions. When astronauts drilled into the Moon’s surface with a hand drill to collect samples, they found it difficult to provide enough downward force to counteract the Moon’s weak gravity. This problem was not solved until the invention of the zero gravity drill decades later.
The current invention of pneumatic exoskeletons, which provide the necessary support for locomotion in low gravity, may be part of a solution. However, newer spacesuits may also need to interface with hardware located outside the suit, such as robotic drills. This will also require greater mobility in spacesuits.
working with robots
Transferring tasks previously performed by humans to robots will be part of the future of space exploration. This is the primary way engineers can also increase the mobility of astronauts in spacesuits.
For example, when an astronaut goes on a spacewalk to inspect the condition of part of a space station and make possible repairs, they are supported by a robotic arm that ensures they do not fly into space. When jointed, this arm is rigid and can limit the astronaut’s movement.
One approach currently being investigated to extend this range of motion is a climbing robot that attaches to both the astronaut and the space station and that the individual can control via the spacesuit. This will allow the astronaut to move around the space station faster and with a greater range of motion than before, allowing them to reach and repair hard-to-reach areas such as corners.
While the ultimate hope is that robots will be able to assess and repair any damage to the space station, humans must be ready to intervene due to possible disruptions to normal operations. Possible disruptions could be natural, such as a small meteor shower damaging the robot. or man-made, such as hacking by a hostile group or government.
This human-robot collaboration will be useful for the types of activities we want to perform in the future. Building a base on the Moon, as both the United States and China plan to do, would involve construction and drilling that humans could not accomplish alone. Modern spacesuits will need to provide an interface to work with this new technology, and we can expect suits to evolve alongside robotics.
The relationship between humans and robots is changing. This will move spacewalkers and robots beyond their previous use as limited tools to a situation where they will become collaborative partners in space. Goals ten or 20 years from now, such as building lunar settlements, mining lunar mineral deposits, and efficiently repairing space station modules, can only be achieved using robotics.
Modern spacesuits will form the fundamental basis for this collaborative relationship, creating an interface through which astronauts and robots can work together to achieve common goals. Therefore, when we leave our footprints once again in other worlds, we will no longer be alone.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yang Gao has received funding from UKRI, UKSA and ESA to conduct space-related research.