Privately made spacesuits for NASA lunar astronauts could reach a major design milestone this year.
Officials from Axiom Space, the company that makes spacesuits for the Artemis program, said Monday (Jan. 22) that the garments may will soon arrive at a critical design assessment. In fact, that review could take place as early as June. However, the news comes just two weeks after NASA was forced to delay its astronaut landing plans by an additional year. It is currently expected that the landing will take place no earlier than 2026.
The new generation of lunar fashion should offer Artemis astronauts more flexibility than the bouncing Apollo crews of the 1960s and 1970s, who worked in stiff fabric. But the feat of safely equipping Artemis explorers has raised concerns over scheduling; the earliest was announced in 2021 by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The department had warned that NASA’s spacesuit development program generally did not allow for a moon landing by 2024 (the goal at the time). NASA has added an extra year for landing preparation to target 2025.
Progress has since been made with two private suppliers, but continued technical delays with the spacesuits, SpaceX’s Starship lander and the Artemis 2 crewed around-the-moon mission forced NASA this month to again delay the Artemis 3 landing until no sooner than 2026. — a decision officials say they made largely to meet safety requirements.
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Post-Apollo lunar spacesuits have a long history with NASA; For example, the agency had at least three internal programs between 2007 and 2021, according to the OIG report. The latest program focused on Artemis was the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), but progress on that front was slowed by “funding shortfalls, the impacts of COVID-19 and technical challenges,” the report said.
NASA then shifted from its immediate plans for lunar spacesuits to recruiting private suppliers, securing design teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace in June 2022. The companies began competing for a lucrative series of task orders, collectively valued at up to $3.5 billion for a “performance period” through 2034, per agency materials. The first task order, for the landing of Artemis 3, was awarded to Axiom Space in September 2022 with a base value of $228.5 million.
Axiom Space unveiled its prototype Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) during a livestream in March 2023, although that version was obscured by a colorful layer to hide proprietary elements from the camera. Axiom’s work on AxEMU continues with a host of industry experts: KBR, Air-Lock, Arrow Science and Technology, David Clark Company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, Sophic Synergistics and APT Research, company officials said at the time.
Unlike the Apollo spacesuits made by ILC Industries, which operated around the lunar equator, Artemis spacesuits must operate in the colder and more remote south polar region of the moon. This may be the place where water ice could be present on the moon. Water is key to the moon’s sustainable presence because it can be used for rocket fuel and life support systems, NASA said.
AxEMU will be tested over the next two years in vacuum chambers that can simulate the temperature and lack of atmosphere in space. They will also be demonstrated underwater at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. That’s where astronauts train for spacewalks, according to Axiom Materials.
NASA’s currently active spacesuits, known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), were designed in the 1970s for the space shuttle program and remain in use on the International Space Station for floating spacewalks. The EMU design, which is not designed for walking or lunar gravity, requires a newer spacesuit for lunar landings.
The EMU was designed for men (and statistically larger bodies) at a time when no other genders were being recruited into the astronaut corps. Astronaut hiring practices changed decades ago, and NASA continues to strive for improvement; that said, spacesuits are expensive to replace.
In the meantime, few female spacewalkers have been able to use the EMU suit. For example, only four spacewalks were exclusively female.
In their statement, Axiom officials highlighted the company’s plans for its own spacesuit to “accommodate a wide range of crew members” and said it is consulting with “a variety of subjects, including engineers and astronauts” to achieve that goal. The AxEMU will also provide other benefits, including the ability to operate specialized Axiom Space tools on the lunar surface – and the ability to stand in permanently shadowed areas of the moon for two hours or more.
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The Artemis program, led by NASA, includes a coalition of more than 30 countries under the Artemis Accords. Some countries are actively funding contributions to lunar missions, while others are adhering to NASA-led standards for peaceful space exploration.
Artemis was first formulated under the Trump administration through a series of space policy directives, accelerating NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon; the program was then continued under Biden.
Although it has been in the works for so long, agency officials emphasize that safety must come first before any lunar landing deadline. Still, recent delays in landing NASA astronauts this month have raised concerns among some members of Congress, who say a Russian-Chinese alliance of countries could arrive on the moon before the United States.
“I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in sending people to the moon,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said during a livestream testimony on January 1. 17.
“The Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking international partners for a lunar mission, a lunar research station, and has expressed the ambition to have human astronauts on the surface by 2030,” Lucas added. “The country that lands first will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities are conducted with openness and transparency, or in a more limited manner.”