NASA’s current batch of ISS spacesuits are getting long in the tooth, having been in service for over four decades. The space agency is keen to acquire spacesuits fit for the 21st century, and recent zero-gravity tests performed by Collins Aerospace are a step in the right direction.
Axiom Space revealed its new Moon suit yesterday during an event held at NASA’s Space Center Houston. It’s the first Moon-specific suit since the Apollo era and a key component of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon later this decade. Here’s what we learned about the new suit, dubbed AxEMU.
Dubbed AxEMU, the next generation suit is designed to be safe, flexible, and capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures experienced at the lunar south pole, where two NASA astronauts are expected to land later this decade.
Pesky lunar dust is an annoying obstacle for astronauts landing on the Moon—it sticks to pretty much everything. New research from Washington State University may have cracked the code for keeping space suits dust-free, in which pressurized liquid nitrogen was used to literally blow the dust from surfaces.
