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Teams led by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace (with ILC Dover as a major contributor) received access to a contract worth up to a total of $3.5 billion to supply spacesuits for future NASA missions through 2034... Axiom and Collins don't have guaranteed orders yet under the contract. (The Collins-ILC Dover team has decades of experience supplying spacesuits to NASA, while Axiom is a new entrant.) The spacesuit designs are still at an early stage, although the companies emphasized that their units will be somewhat modular, as lightweight and flexible as possible, and will integrate feedback from astronauts and the...

NASA won't be ready to send astronauts to the moon by 2024 as planned because, among other reasons, their spacesuits won't be ready, the agency's internal watchdog found. NASA had officially planned to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, but independent experts and its own acting administrator had already doubted that timeline was realistic. In a report this month, NASA's inspector general found that because of delays in spacesuit development, "a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible." The report blames a lack of funding, the COVID-19 pandemic and "technical challenges" for the...

On August 13, 2019, NASA at the Trident Basin in Cape Canaveral, Florida, astronauts Doug Hurley, left, and Bob Behnken work with teams from NASA and SpaceX to rehearse crew extraction from SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which will be used to carry humans to the International Space Station. Using the ship Go Searcher to recover their spacecraft after splashdown and a mock-up of the Crew Dragon, the teams worked through the steps necessary to get Hurley and Behnken safely out of the Dragon. The pair will fly to the space station aboard the Crew Dragon for the SpaceX Demo-2 mission.

That sad trombone you hear is the sound of NASA’s attempt at a history-making spacewalk falling apart. After conducting the first spacewalk this week, astronaut Anne McClain noted that the large suit she was wearing did not allow her to move effectively. “McClain learned during her first spacewalk that a medium-size hard upper torso – essentially the shirt of the spacesuit – fits her best,” according to a statement from NASA. Because only one medium-size torso would be ready by the planned Friday spacewalk, NASA astronaut Christina Koch will use the suit.

Nanosuit Lets Insects Survive in Vacuum by Jillian Scharr April 17 2013 01:57 PM ET A fruit fly larva chills out while viewed through a scanning electron microscope, a process the scientists thought would have killed it. " There are very few organisms that can survive in a vacuum, and usually fruit fly larvae are not one of them. But almost by accident, researchers have discovered a way to create a “nanosuit” around the insects that allows them to survive in a vacuum, or space devoid of matter, for more than an hour.  Researchers at the Hamamatsu University School...

Engineers at Johnson Space Center (JSC) have scheduled four days of testing with three different versions of NASA’s planned new spacesuit to begin melding the suit with the Orion crew exploration vehicle that is also under development there. Astronauts and engineers will don the prototype Constellation suits to compare their utility for a number of tasks in a mockup of the latest configuration of the Orion crew cabin. Scheduled for testing are a prototype built by David Clark Co., Inc., for Oceaneering, the prime contractor for the new spacesuit. A separate suit built by ILC Dover, another Oceaneering subcontractor, also...

Hundreds of people have already signed up for suborbital flights into space through Virgin Galactic, one of several firms that plan to offer such trips by 2010. But what are all those space tourists going to wear? A new company called Orbital Outfitters is already at work on a space suit specifically designed for suborbital tourism. Last week, Orbital announced that it had signed a contract with XCor Aerospace, of Mojave, CA; the companies will work together on finalizing a space-suit design and other safety equipment. Orbital Outfitters will manufacture and own the suits, which will be leased to XCor.

Japan hopes to become the third nation to produce a space suit, using its technology to design a slimmer outfit for the next US mission to the moon, an official said Wednesday. Japan will use its computer and fiber knowhow to design gear weighing 20 kilograms (44 pounds), down from the burdensome 120 kilograms (265 pounds) of the current US-made outfit, a space agency official said. Space suits, which are also made by Russia, must shield humans from massive change in temperature and protect them from nuisances such as meteoric stones. The agency aims to develop the new space outfit...

MILFORD — Pilots hurtling through the sky at three times the speed of sound and astronauts exploring space and walking on the moon have all worn gear designed and produced by the workers at Air-Lock Inc. Now the engineers and machinists inhabiting the little factory that looks like a series of old Army barracks off Milford's Gulf Street are developing a new suit to clothe the first Mars exploration teams. "Yup, we hope so," said Dennis Finch, Air-Lock's senior designer, on the prospects of winning the contract to create a new helmet and the bearing assemblies that will allow astronauts...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Future explorers on the Moon and Mars could be outfitted in lightweight, high-tech spacesuits that offer far more flexibility than the bulky suits that have been used for spacewalks in the 1960s. Research is under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a Bio-Suit System that incorporates a suit designed to augment a person’s biological skin by providing mechanical counter-pressure. The “epidermis” of such a second skin could be applied in spray-on fashion in the form of an organic, biodegradable layer. This coating would protect an astronaut conducting a spacewalk in extremely dusty planetary environments....

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Future explorers on the Moon and Mars could be outfitted in lightweight, high-tech spacesuits that offer far more flexibility than the bulky suits that have been used for spacewalks in the 1960s. Research is under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) (MIT) on a Bio-Suit System that incorporates a suit designed to augment a person's biological skin by providing mechanical counter-pressure. The epidermis of such a second skin could be applied in spray-on fashion in the form of an organic, biodegradable layer. This coating would protect an astronaut conducting a spacewalk in...