Axiom Space is collaborating with the Italian luxury fashion house – Prada, to design spacesuits for NASA’s upcoming Artemis III mission. At the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, Prada and Axiom unveiled their jointly developed spacesuit.
The Space suit does not look anything like the Prada’s fashion wear. The luxury brand used their sewing techniques and expertise with different materials to help bridge the gap between functionality and aesthetics. What’s cool is that the suit has a monolithic design, meaning it uses a single foundational architecture. This allows future designs to evolve for NASA’s other exploration programs.
During the development process, the team used a dark layer on the suit to hide the proprietary tech, the final version will be made of a white material to reflect heat and protect astronauts from extreme temperatures and lunar dust. Before the suits are officially used, Axiom intends to conduct crewed underwater tests to simulate space conditions.
New Spacesuit Features
The spacesuit, called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), is nearly complete. However, it’s still undergoing rigorous testing to ensure it can handle the harsh conditions of space.
The AxEMU suit by Axiom and Prada comes with many features that will be help the astronauts on the lunar mission and in future missions to Mars and deep space. Compared to NASA’s older space suits, the AxEMU suit offers better flexibility and mobility in addition to being able to accommodate different body types. The suit also comes with built-in 4G/LTE communications, biometric monitoring and a new control interface. Gloves and boots are custom fitted to the astronauts to withstand the tough lunar terrain and temperatures. During initial testing, the suit was found to be quite comfortable, which is crucial for astronauts spending long hours in space.
For the Moon and Beyond
The AxEMU suit provides enough oxygen to support spacewalks lasting eight hours or more, and also featuring redundant systems for safety. It also has an onboard diagnostic computer and tools for performing scientific experiments during moonwalks.
These AxEMU suits will be used for the Artemis III mission in 2025 by NASA. This mission is crucial as it will be the first time astronauts walk on the Moon since the Apollo program decades ago.
It’s exciting to think that in just a couple of years, astronauts will be walking on the Moon in Prada-designed suits!
