NASA Plans To Test New Spacesuits On The ISS, Preparing For 2024 Moon Missions

NASA for the first time has scheduled to resend its astronauts to the Moon in the year 2024. This means that when returning to the Moon, ours astronauts need to be equipped with more advanced spacesuits for future exploration. 

Up to now, NASA has already offered a spacesuit design named "Extravehicular Mobility Unit -EMU". However, it only supports them with floating activities in outer space but not for traveling on the Moon's rugged surface. NASA, therefore, is planning to develop new spacesuits that can be tested on the ISS in the upcoming 4 years during the spacewalks. Any astronaut taken to the Moon to complete the Artemis mission will put on those suits as long as the ISS members have checked its "walkable" functionality. 

Many years ago, the American space agency has put many efforts in spacesuit developments, shown by its in-house project for advanced spacesuits. NASA has postponed many scheduled testings for the new variant of its old EVA spacesuit, dubbed "xEMU". Lindsay Aitchison, an engineer specializing in making spacesuit for NASA, mentioned that the agency has undergone many developments and repetition of the designing process, and is ready for a more advanced system. Until now, the "xEMU" has experienced over 30 runs in a large swimming pool that is used for spacewalks training programs (or the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory). 

The new EVA suit, "xEMU" is said to be influenced by many designs from the 1990s, such as Mark III of ILC Dover that was utilized by NASA in its field testing program Desert Research. The difference of "xEMU" is that it has a small display set in front of the suit. This is consistent with a large number of NASA astronauts.

Another reason making "xEMU" become viable in space is its ability to perform missions at the Gateway Space Station in the future lunar exploration, and the landing on Mars. According to Aitchison, the design of it can be altered to support other missions via the combination of components to maintain the safety for astronauts in different environments.