NASA selects two companies to build next-generation lunar spacesuits

NASA has picked two space companies under its Artemis programme— the agency’s flagship initiative to send humans back to the lunar surface— to develop the next-generation spacesuits for future astronauts to conduct spacewalks and eventually traverse the surface of the Moon.

Apart from the astronauts, these lunar suits made by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace will also be worn by crew members living and working on the International Space Station. 

The contracts were awarded by NASA as part of its strategy of growing commercial partnerships.

"With these awards, NASA and our partners will develop advanced, reliable spacesuits that allow humans to explore the cosmos unlike ever before," said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement.

"By partnering with industry, we are efficiently advancing the necessary technology to keep Americans on a path of successful discovery on the International Space Station and as we set our sights on exploring the lunar surface."

Under the Artemis programme, NASA seeks to land the first woman and the first person of colour at the lunar south pole by 2025, and eventually prepare for landing crewed missions on Mars.

Experts from NASA have developed the required safety and technical standards for the spacesuits. Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace will design, develop and potentially produce the suits and any necessary equipment for the space station crew and Artemis astronauts.

The suits are expected to be ready by the mid-2020s. “The new suits and their capabilities will "help us explore more of the moon than we ever have before," Lindsay Aitchison, program executive for NASA's Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility program, told CNN.

"We will be able to have these capabilities tested, and they'll be tested before our astronauts are being used on orbit or either on the surface of the moon," Wyche said.

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