Dynamic spacesuits that fit all are latest star of NASA moon mission
Kristine Davis did squats on a stage Tuesday in Washington, D.C., raising her arms above her head in a pressurized spacesuit that undoubtedly was double her weight.
Fifty years ago when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, this kind of mobility was impossible. The spacesuit’s rigidity meant they couldn’t bend their fingers or knees, and they certainly couldn’t lift their arms high — the kind of movement Davis, an advanced spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, did with ease.
This is Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit or xEMU. And if NASA returns to the moon in 2024 as directed by the Trump administration, the suit will allow astronauts to reach down and touch the lunar surface.
“I feel great,” Davis said Tuesday. “The suit is built for mobility, so we can walk around easily and do dynamic motion.”
Davis and her colleague, Dustin Gohmert, demonstrated the capa
bilities of NASA’s two new spacesuits at the agency’s headquarters in Wasington, D.C. on Tuesday.
The second suit, known as the Orion Crew Survival Suit, was built for launch and re-entry aboard the Orion spacecraft that will take astronauts to the moon.
NASA for more than a decade has been working on new spacesuits — an effort that has stumbled, in part, because of inadequate funding and changing celestial destinations.
As of July, the space agency had spent $250 million on developing the xEMU, according to WKMG NEWS 6 in Orlando.
Meanwhile, the suits worn by astronauts during spacewalks outside the International Space Station are 40 years old and reaching the end of their lives. Not only are they in need of constant maintenance, they were designed at a time when women, who typically require different sizes than men, weren’t astronauts.
This came to a head in March, when NASA was forced to cancel its first, all-female spacewalk when the agency discovered that only one spacesuit on the station would fit the women’s smaller frames. NASA this week will try again for an all-female spacewalk.
“We, as the Artemis generation, are building spacesuits that will fit all our astronauts,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Tuesday. “We want every person who dreams of going into space, to say to them that they can.”
Next-generation suits
Next-generation suit design began more than a decade ago with President George W. Bush’s Constellation program.
The Constellation program intended to return astronauts to the lunar surface. But when it was shuttered in 2010, NASA decided to keep building the suits. NASA officials also began developing suits that would become the xEMUs in 2007 and the Orion launch and entry suit in 2009.
Much of that work was done in Houston.
But by 2017, NASA had funneled $200 million into spacesuit development — and they were still years away from a useable spacesuit, according to the 2017 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General.
“As different missions require different designs, the lack of a formal plan and specific destinations for future missions has complicated spacesuit development,” the report stated. “Moreover, the agency has reduced the funding dedicated to spacesuit development in favor of other priorities such as an inspace habitat.”
But on Tuesday, NASA was able to show off the suits, which are scheduled for testing on the space station in 2023.
The xEMU suit has bearings located at the astronauts joints to allow easy movement and is devoid of zippers and cables to keep harmful lunar dust from entering the suit and gumming up the joints.
Lunar dust was a major problem for the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, the dust was so sharp and abrasive it wore through multiple layers of astronaut Harrison Schmitt’s boot, which was made of a material similar to Kevlar, according to 2008 Science Daily article. Apollo astronauts also reported symptoms similar to hay fever after breathing in the dust and difficulty moving the spacesuits’ joints after dust found its way inside.
It also can withstand +/- 250 degrees Fahrenheit, though scientists are examining whether to add heating elements to the suit’s boots for the extreme temperatures of the moon’s poles.
Astronaut Kate Rubins was involved in initial testing of the suit and said mobility was one of the biggest upgrades she noticed.
“The more mobility you have, the more tasks you can get done and the more science you can accomplish,” Rubins said. Rubins has flown on the space station and said the xEMUs are significantly better than the suits used on the space station.
They also have different requirements. The space station suits are built for work in zero gravity, where astronauts float about outside of the station. There is no need for mobility in the legs, Rubins said, because you don’t really use them.
“This is a big step up from current suits we flew with on ISS,” Rubins said.
The survival suit will be worn by astronauts during launch and reentry on the Orion spacecraft. If Orion suffers a pressurization failure, astronauts could live in these suits for up to six days.
Limited usability
Retired astronaut Bonnie Dunbar said Tuesday that the biggest limitation of the current space suits is that “one size does not fit all.”
Dunbar, who flew on five shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, said she and many other astronauts struggled with suit fit during the shuttle era. For her, bending the elbow of the suit was the issue.
The suits are made with a man’s shoulder in mind, she said, and therefore it didn’t line up with her elbow joint. So she was forced to use her other hand to help the bend along.
And that was during the height of the shuttle era, when there were five different sizes for individuals to choose from. Now, there’s only three — which means Dunbar wasn’t at all surprised when NASA astronaut Anne McClain dropped out of the first, all-female spacewalk because her suit didn’t fit.
“We knew that would happen 20 years ago,” Dunbar told the Houston Chronicle during an interview at the annual meeting of Association of Space Explorers Planetary Congress held at Space Center Houston.
Besides the fit issues, the spacesuits astronaut wear to work outside the space station are the same ones that were built in 1974 and first used in 1981.
Given their age, they are in constant need of maintenance — something that has gotten harder since the Space Shuttle program was shuttered in 2011. NASA used to transport the suits back to Earth for maintenance on the shuttle, but now much of the maintenance must be done on the space station.
The aging spacesuits have been a long-known-about problem for NASA, as highlighted by the agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel in April.
“In its 1st quarterly meeting in March, the panel noted the challenges of maintaining an ambitious yet necessary (spacewalk) schedule for sustainment of ISS, while simultaneously managing a program for extending the suit-life of the aging (suits),” according to notes on the April public meeting. “It is increasingly apparent that the usable life of the (spacewalk) suits is limited.”
In its 2017 report, the inspector general determined that NASA may not have enough suits to last until the end of the agency’s commitment to the orbiting laboratory, in 2024. Congress likely will extend the federal government’s commitment to the space station until at least 2030.
The same core systems of the xEMU suit could be used to replace those of the space station, according to NASA.