NASA, Axiom Space reveal spacesuit for Artemis III moon landing mission

The first woman on the moon, whoever that may be, found out Wednesday what she’ll be wearing when she gets there.

NASA and Axiom Space, the Houston-based commercial company creating the next-generation spacesuit to be worn on Artemis III, revealed its design during an event at Space Center Houston.

Axiom Space engineer Jim Stein ambled out on stage in a black-orange-and-blue spacesuit smiling through a domed helmet, although the moonbound product will be mostly white for thermal reasons.

“We are going to learn how to operate on the moon for extended periods of time and learn how to operate away from planet Earth and utilize the resources on the moon,” said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana. “All of this is in preparation for eventually going on to Mars. And we’re making those first steps now. We’ve got to have an EVA [extra-vehicular activity] mobility suit in order to make that happen. And this is the suit that’s going to do it.”

The suit’s helmet featured a light band mounted to a visor assembly in the helmet bubble, an HD video camera mounted to the side, all part of a hard upper torso that is rigid from the waist up. Astronauts will enter the suit from the rear through a back door.

“This hatch would open up, you would put your feet in, put your arms in and then kind of shimmy down into the suit and then we would close the hatch,” said Russell Ralston, a deputy program manager for Extravehicular Activity for Axiom Space. He did say individuals will be able to get it on by themselves.

The arms have several joints to allow for maximum range of motion, while the gloves will be enhanced to allow for better handling of tools. Above the hatch is a backpack with life-support systems.

“You can think of it as like a very fancy scuba tank and air conditioner kind of combined into one,” Ralston said.

Since the missions are headed to the colder regions of the moon, the boots will be better insulated for astronaut comfort, while the legs allow for more mobility as well, something demonstrated by Stein who was doing squats and lunges on stage.

“There’s a variety of joints that we put as well into the lower torso assembly and this is going to be a huge improvement over the Apollo suits.” Ralston said.

Axiom Space, which is gearing up for its second private mission to the International Space Station and won the right to send up a third as early as November this year, was chosen by NASA for a contract worth $228.5 million to design and provide the spacesuits for the Artemis III mission. It will send two astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo missions in 1972.

The new suits are meant to replace the existing ones used for EVAs on the International Space Station. Those have been modified over time but are based on a 45-year-old design from the space shuttle era.

“We’ve been using the same suit based on that technology. And now today, Axiom is going to innovate,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center where the astronaut corps are based. “They’re going to take what NASA has provided in from the testing that we’ve done and they will now take and come up with more functionality, more performance, more capability.”

Ralston said the Axiom suits are designed for about eight hours of use and for much more strenuous metabolic rate of work than those currently used on the ISS that have only about a 6 1/2-hour limit.

“Honestly it’s a pretty huge step up in performance in terms of EVA capability,” he said.

NASA had been leading design of what it had been calling the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU), and continued work on those until last October when it shifted to a supervisory role for competing commercial companies. Axiom’s version is called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU.

Axiom’s president and CEO Michael Suffredini said the design is about half its own and half what NASA had been developing over the last decade.

“It’s a critical part of exploration, and we’re extremely excited and proud to have been selected to go on this journey with NASA as it takes civilization beyond beyond low-Earth orbit,” he said.

It will accommodate about 90% of the male and female body types in the U.S population, as suits won’t be custom-fit, but rather use a small-medium-large base for its various elements that can be swapped out, but that can then be further tailored for individual wearers.

As part of the Artemis III contract, Axiom has to demonstrate the suit “in a spacelike environment” before the mission, but Ralston said it won’t be headed to space beforehand.

“We’ll do an extensive set of ground testing and qualification programmed to make sure that the suit’s bulletproof and safe to go,” he said.

The choice of Axiom for the initial Artemis spacesuit contract, which was announced last year, fell in line with the company’s already in-the-works plans to construct its own suits for its future standalone commercial space station. NASA is already working with them to add modules to the ISS that will eventually separate when the ISS is decommissioned.

Collins Aerospace, however, won the initial contract for a replacement suit to be used on the ISS. Both Collins and Axiom, though. remain in competition for both future low-Earth orbit spacesuits and Artemis missions, individual contracts that could be worth up to $3.5 billion for missions through 2034.

“We have a lot of tough requirements on it. So these guys have their work cut out for them,” said NASA’s Lara Kearney, manager for the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. “The moon is definitely a hostile place and the south pole is going to really be a challenge.”

While safety and thermal needs were paramount, NASA also requires more movement.

“We are really looking for improved mobility so that our astronauts can operate more efficiently and effectively than they were able to do many years ago on Apollo,” she said. “Really looking forward to a few years from now when we see that first Axiom footprint on the moon.”

Artemis III is on NASA’s schedule to fly as early as December 2025. First up, though, is the successful crewed flight of Artemis II with a target launch of November 2024. That mission with four crew set to be announced on April 3 will orbit the moon, but not land on it. It’s the next step after the successful flight of Artemis I, the uncrewed mission that took off from Kennedy Space Center last November.

The Artemis III launch date is beholden to Axiom satisfying the spacesuit contract, but also to SpaceX providing a version of its in-development Starship spacecraft as the winner of the first Human Landing System contract. Both needs could push Artemis III’s launch date into 2026 or beyond.

When it flies, it will take four crew to the moon in the Orion spacecraft. Two of the four will transfer from Orion into the Starship lander, and make their way down to the moon’s south pole.

“When that first woman steps down on the surface of the moon on Artemis III, she’s going to be wearing an Axiom spacesuit,” said Cabana. “I can’t wait to see that happen.”

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