NASA plans to dress its astronauts in style for the Artemis III mission! As fancy as that sounds, there’s more than meets the eye.
The ambitious fashion project will cost the space agency $228.5 million for some Moonwalking spacesuits that we’ve only seen in movies. Axiom Space is the company that’ll make the incredible suits.
Check out below all the incredible facts and learn about NASA’s plans.
Traveling to Space in Style
For its upcoming Moon landing, NASA has already begun to pack and order some new spacesuits. How ambitious! Axiom Space has been given a $228.5 million contract by NASA to develop a “moonwalking system” for the space agency’s mission back to our lunar neighbor.
Why the interest in such ‘special’ spacesuits?
NASA realized that lunar spacesuits would need to be significantly different from the few spacesuits currently available on the International Space Station. So, the new suits must face the gravity of the Moon and the lunar dust, which has a proneness to attach to everything.
So, NASA came up with its own Moon spacesuits and displayed the prototypes in 2019. However, a report revealed that the creation of such suits had been put off and that they wouldn’t be completed in time for the anticipated lunar landing. But the space agency didn’t stop there.
Instead, NASA announced in June that it has opted to contract with two businesses, Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space, to design the cool lunar spacesuit. The first company has prior expertise in developing spacesuits for the space agency, so it wouldn’t have been a surprise to collaborate again.
Well, it didn’t turn that way!
NASA has chosen Axion Space to create the spacesuits and make some history because it intends to send the first woman to the Moon on the Artemis III mission. That’s genuinely fascinating, isn’t it?!
Until then, there’s still something left to do: NASA needs to get the Artemis I mission off the ground. Unfortunately, this mission has been delayed several times.