Axiom Space, in collaboration with fashion giant Prada, has created its final Moon suit that will be worn on NASA’s Artemis III, landing humans on the surface of the Moon.
Prada, a luxury Italian fashion house, and Axiom Space, a Houston-based spaceflight services company, have revealed the outer layer of their spacesuits.
These suits will be worn on the momentous first flight, during which the first woman and first person of color will land on the Moon. In Milan, Prada’s birthplace, the suit was revealed at the International Astronautical Congress.
The suit has gone through its preliminary design review and will enter the final review stages in 2025.
Axiom Space was granted a whopping $230 million to make the suits for the Artemis III mission, which is expected to launch in the latter half of 2026.
In March, Axiom revealed a prototype of the spacesuit, and now it has some notable upgrades.
Design features
The final suit features a mainly white exterior, which helps reflect heat when in direct sunlight. The suit's whiteness also helps reduce lunar dust.
An integrated helmet and portable life support system are part of the upper torso structure, which will help keep astronauts alive and well on the Moon.
Astronauts need protection in these alien conditions. That’s why the suit is fitted with a control interface, biometric monitoring, enhanced mobility, flexibility, and safety, Axiom Space said.
The AxEMU suit will allow astronauts to walk in space for at least eight hours. It’s unisex and can accommodate a wide array of different crew members.
The AxEMU's architecture is “evolvable, scalable, and adaptable for missions” on the lunar surface and in low-Earth orbit.
“The suit uses a regenerable carbon dioxide scrubbing system and a robust cooling technology to remove heat from the system,” the spaceflight service said.
The helmet and visor are coated to make sure that astronauts can see what’s going on around them. The suit is also fitted with custom gloves, which supersede the regular gloves used today.
Axiom Space said that it has iteratively improved the suit over two years to ensure that it’s good enough for the Artemis III mission. They even tested the suit underwater to simulate the Moon’s environment.
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