Redesiging the spacesuit
If astronauts are to set foot on a planetary surface they’ll need to be suited and booted with some new wear
If we're intending to land on the surface of other worlds, astronauts will need to change their attire, say experts
Name an iconic item of clothing worn during the 1960s and chances are you’ll cycle through the usual suspects, from miniskirts through to the PVC dress. Some will have graced the western world’s catwalks during this most fashionable of decades, but one revolutionary garment never quite made it to Paris or Milan yet has proved truly out of this world.
We’re talking, of course, about the spacesuit – the garment which has proven essential in allowing astronauts to survive in the harsh environment of outer space and made travel there and back much safer. Suits have been part and parcel of space travel from the earliest days – cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin wore the first spacesuit, the SK-1, in space on the iconic flight on 12 April 1961. As such, they have allowed humans to fly into low Earth orbit, set foot on the Moon and perform vital duties outside of the International Space Station (ISS) – yet they are far from perfect.
“Spacesuits are notoriously bulky, heavy, immobile and risky,” says Ted Southern, president of Final Frontier Design, a company which develops safety garments to enable future human space travel. To that end, Southern knows exactly where and why improvements are necessary. For while past and current spacesuits have been more than adequate for fleeting visits to the lunar surface and working on the ISS, future plans and ambitions are ensuring the race to redesign them is very much on.
Spacesuits are not merely an item of protective clothing. They are anthropomorphic, miniature machines with the complexity of a larger space vehicle. Each contains about 2,000 parts, every one critical for safeguarding the life of the wearer and allowing them to perform tasks. Trouble is, the current crop are ageing, and they are essentially unchanged from those used throughout the Space Shuttle program. Indeed, the intravehicular activity (IVA) suits are pretty much the same as those worn in 1959 and, when you consider the need for lighter, more reliable suits, especially for the forthcoming space tourism market, it’s clear new materials and designs are needed.
What we are seeing now are bold attempts to drag spacesuit design into the 21st century while smashing the manufacturing duopoly which has existed for decades. In doing so designers are tackling the orange ‘pumpkin’ Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES), IVA suits and the current Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) – that is, the white outfits used by astronauts operating outside of a spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. “The EMU was designed in the 1970s for the Space Shuttle,” explains Southern. “But although it has been upgraded over the years to last for longer and longer missions, including the International Space Station, it cannot last much longer in terms of time.”
There are clear reasons for this. The simplest is that current stock levels for extravehicular spacesuits is low, and they are expected to last for just five more years. “There are only 12 EMUs left, and some vendors don’t even exist, so it’s not as simple as ordering more,” says Southern. Furthermore, EMUs – despite offering dexterity and flexibility, allowing astronauts to breathe, dealing with waste and regulating temperature, among many other features – will need to cope with extra demands placed upon them.
That’s because NASA – pushed along by its former administrator Charles Bolden – is seeking a greater number of human-focused missions. The US agency proposes to put boots on the Moon once more, and there are plans for future human travel to Mars. And yet, as Southern states, “Current suit systems do not work well in dusty environments like the Moon or Mars. Next-generation missions will involve longer duration and longer distance from Earth, which will drive up requirements for reliability.” It’s abundantly clear that a whole new approach to spacesuit design is urgently required.
So what direction are they heading in? One of the top spacesuit designers is Amy Ross who works at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. She helped pioneer a new glove design in the 1990s to replace the 4000 series EVA glove introduced in 1985, and she has also worked on new pressure garments and better surface EVA suits.
“Spacesuits are notoriously bulky, heavy, immobile and risky”
Ted Southern
More recently, however – with the focus switching back towards manned exploration of other solar bodies – Ross has been instrumental in the creation of the Z-2 spacesuit designed for setting foot on the surface of the Moon or Mars. It’s one of a number of designs under consideration and it more than surpasses the basic Apollo A7L spacesuits worn by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969.
“A spacesuit for the lunar surface hasn’t been designed and tested since the Apollo program almost 50 years ago,” says Vinita Marwaha Madill, space operations engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA) and founder of Rocket Women.
“The spacesuit technology developed during the mid-20th century was originally designed for shortduration missions to the Moon, with the longest stay being 75 hours during Apollo 17. The 1960s and 1970s were an incredible era for space exploration, however, we haven’t actually stepped foot on the Moon for a long 45 years. So we will need to design a suit to allow human lunar exploration to proceed.”
Certainly, the Z-2 spacesuit, designed for maximum astronaut productivity on a planetary surface, looks promising. Created to allow for easy exploration, sample collection and manoeuvring, its use of advanced composites makes it highly durable and lightweight. Adjustable across the waist and shoulder it can fit many sizes of crew member, and because it is entered by a rear port it can dock outside of a landing craft to make it easy to climb into – something astronauts using the EMU can only dream of.
The Z-2 also considers the need for astronauts to walk, so special attention has been paid to the waist and hip joints, as well as a sturdy boot which, unlike an EMU, was not simply hard-soled. To figure out the best possible shoe the designers observed the way astronauts put pressure on their feet at different gravities. What’s more there has been work on robotic assistance, using motors in the limbs of the suit to detect motion and push the suit in the desired direction.
Not that NASA is moving forward entirely by itself. Other space agencies around the world are also involved in the pursuit of the new. The European Space Agency (ESA), for example, is working alongside its counterparts in the US, Japan, Canada and Russia, and everything is on the table. The hope is that suits can be much more simplistic than today yet prove far more effective. In that sense they’d be maintainable far from Earth, which will be crucial for long-haul human missions.
One of the missions under consideration is the joint-venture Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway which will eventually take humankind a thousand-times farther into the Solar System than the ISS. Madill
says astronauts will use this lunar-orbit space station as a staging post for exploration missions to Earth’s natural satellite and eventually to the Red Planet. They’ll travel there on the Orion spacecraft and will need suitable protection both inside and outside the craft.
“An astronaut that lands on the Moon will carry out spacewalks, conduct geology in the field, deploy science experiments, collect and analyse samples, prepare samples for Earth return, report observations to Earth and drive lunar rovers,” Madill says. Since humanity’s next destination on the Moon will be the extreme and alien landscape of the lunar south pole where temperatures as low as -238 degrees Celsius (-396 degrees Fahrenheit) have been recorded, the suit they wear will need to withstand the harsh conditions.
As such, designing a spacesuit, Madill says, has to draw on multiple skills. It requires knowledge of textiles, engineering, material science and atmospheric science all rolled into one. “Right now astronauts going to the ISS have a specialised spacesuit geared for spacewalks in low-Earth orbit,” she continues. “But different suits will be needed if we want to go to the Moon, and they’ll have to be tailored to the lunar environment.” Spacesuits also need to take into account internal danger.
“One big difficulty is that they must operate with pure oxygen inside, which means that everything is flammable and highly corrosive,” Southern says. “This makes electronics, which are critical for system operations, problematic. They must have a liquid-cooling garment, a pressure garment, a thermal garment, a micrometeoroid garment and an outer garment in addition to other layers.”
NASA has also been working on a rear-entry technology demonstrator suit called the Prototype eXploration Suit (PXS) which focuses on improving suit fit and performance while cutting the amount of equipment that is needed for long-duration missions. Uniquely, it has 3D-printable components which could be created during missions to suit different requirements on the fly.
“This suit could be used for EVAs in microgravity or it could be further modified for walking on planets,” Madill says. “The spacesuit has a Suit Control Assembly, which is a box at the front of the suit allowing the crew member to control certain life-support components including pressure and cooling and electronics (radio, volume). The astronaut also has an insight into some of the data that’s coming back and forth from the suit computer to the display. The suit designers are currently wearing and using the suit to see what
the limitations are and incorporating changes that need to be made into the next prototype.”
As we’ve mentioned, EVA suits are not the only ones being looked at: IVA suits are also being redesigned as part of an ongoing process, and this has led to innovations such as the xEMU-Lite, which is earmarked for possible testing on the ISS by the mid-2020s. Intended as a replacement for the current EMUs, they’ll be vital if the space station’s life is extended to the late 2020s. But they’re not the only ones under development.
The Orion Crew Survival Systems Suit is being designed for use in the next-generation human spacecraft Orion, which aims to take humans farther than they have ever been before, and it’s going to be equipped with a built-in toilet. This would come in handy if the spacecraft capsule depressurised, allowing the astronauts to remain in their suits for up to six days.
NASA is heavily involved in its creation, and yet private companies such as Final Frontier Design, SpaceX and Boeing are also coming into their own with regards to IVAs. Boeing, for example, tells us that it has eschewed the existing ACES suits for its Starliner spacecraft because it wanted a high level of compatibility between the suit and capsule. The new spacesuit offers greater pressurised mobility, lighter weights, touchscreen-friendly gloves and easy transitions from sitting to standing.
“These features improve human capability and performance and ensure mission success while working in the Starliner,” says Boeing engineer Kavya Manyapu. “They’re especially important during emergency situations when astronauts would have to perform critical functions.
“We wanted a suit that enhances their abilities, rather than impedes their ability to perform required actions. Examples include reaching and pulling the abort handle if an abort is necessary or reaching and opening oxygen valves from within their pressurised suit in the event of a cabin depressurisation. Additionally, in high-G environments, the lighter the suit the better it is.”
Even so, ACES is not being entirely abandoned. As Madill tells us, NASA is considering making a few tweaks in order to create the Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit (MACES). “It would provide contingency EVA capability to all Orion missions with mobility enhancements added to the former Shuttle ACES suit,” Madill says. “MACES, however, has potentially limited mobility, which could increase crew fatigue and EVA task capability when they’re using the suit.”
Such negatives are not unusual, and it’s fair to say there will never be a perfect spacesuit. Of course, there is a list of desires – “NASA really wants to see much more visibility, better mobility and better control and communications in their next-
“We wanted a suit that enhances abilities, rather than impedes the ability to perform required actions”
Kavya Manyapu
“The 1960s and 1970s were an incredible era for space exploration; we haven’t actually stepped foot on the Moon for a long 45 years”
Vinita Marwaha Madill
generation space suit,” says Madill – but a ‘one-suitsuits-all’ solution is clearly ‘pie-in-the-sky’ thinking.
“Engineering involves trade-offs, and there are some serious limitations to materials that make the perfect suit impossible,” explains Southern. “The extreme environment of space is essentially impossible to safely protect a human against.”
He says an ideal suit might be very lightweight, non-restrictive in mobility, highly reliable in terms of life support, inexpensive, thin and not bulky and have a very long life. But the best way forward, he contends, is to have different suits for different occasions, something Madill fully agrees with.
“The design of a spacesuit may seem simple since they are covered with a fabric thermal micrometeoroid garment, but it is in fact one of the most complex technological developments to carry out,” Madill concludes. “Suits of the future need to use new ideas and some new materials to keep us on our way to the Moon and, later, Mars – similar to the new suits by SpaceX and Boeing that will be worn by astronauts inside their capsules as they launch to the International Space Station over the coming year.”