NASA Unveils One Size Flexible Space Suits

When the astronauts from the US next touch down on the surface of the Moon, they can expect to walk, the way do, on the surface of the Earth. Thanks to a new generation of the spacesuits that offer some important and easy advantages over those suits belong to the Apollo era. Thus we can also expect to see off the bunny hops.

On Tuesday, NASA unveiled the prototypes of the Orion Crew Survival Suit that will be worn on the journey and the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) for the lunar surface, ahead of its planned return to the Moon by the year 2024.

Revealing the new suits for the space journey, Spacesuit engineer Kristine Davis wore a pressurized red, blue and white xEMU suit, showing off the vast range of motion, which is possible because of the bearings systems on the waist, arms and legs.

The suits are also expandable and therefore a single size can fit all, meaning there won’t be a repeat of an embarrassing flub that happened in March and which has caused the first all-female spacewalk to be aborted, as a second medium-sized suit was not available.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told media, students and interns at NASA’s Washington Headquarters, “If we remember the Apollo generation, we remember Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, they bunny hopped on the surface of the Moon. Now we are going to be able to walk on the surface of the Moon, which is very different from the suits of the past”.

Another key innovative feature of the xEMU is its unlimited capacity to absorb carbon dioxide in large quantities, a byproduct of respiration, which is also very poisonous.

The utility suits, achieves this feature through a system that absorbs and then removes the gas into the vacuum of the space, unlike the current systems that merely absorb it till it reaches a saturation point.

Meanwhile, the crew survival suit is designed to provide full life support for up to six days, a scenario that could be required, as for example, if a meteorite punches a hole in the spacecraft’s hull.

Under its Artemis mission, NASA plans to land on the South Pole of the Moon in order to exploit its water ice, which was first discovered in the year 2009, both for life support purposes and to split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket propellant.

NASA also views its return to the Moon, as a confirmed ground for its mission to Mars in the 2030s.