An artistic rendering of astronauts wearing next-generation spacesuits on the Moon. | Image: NASA
Today, NASA announced that two private companies — Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace — will develop the next-generation spacesuits that future astronauts will wear to conduct spacewalks and eventually traverse the surface of the Moon. It’s a bold new direction for spacesuit development at NASA, with the agency handing the job over to the private sector after years of struggling to develop a new suit of its own.
These new spacesuits will play a critical role in NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s flagship initiative to send humans back to the lunar surface. Currently, NASA is aiming to land the first Artemis astronauts on the Moon by 2025 — a one-year delay from the 2024 deadline originally set by the Trump administration. When the…
