Hand Me Downs
NASA’s spacesuits, which its astronauts use to venture outside the International Space Station, are really starting to show their age.
In June, NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson was alarmed to discover water squirting from her spacesuit and covering her visor with ice, forcing the agency to call off the planned spacewalk. In the same month, NASA called off yet another spacewalk due to a “spacesuit discomfort” issue plaguing NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick.
The space agency’s extravehicular mobility unit (EMU), essentially a self-sufficient spacecraft in the shape of a bulky spacesuit, dates back to the early 1980s and hasn’t seen any major updates since the late 1990s. The latest design, which was first flown in 1998, was meant to last 15 years, meaning that the suits currently being used are far beyond their intended shelf life.
“None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, as we would say, and so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use,” Dominick, who returned to Earth last month after spending more than half a year on board the ISS, told reporters last week, as quoted by Space.com.
Following Suit
After what Dyson called getting “an arctic blast all over my visor,” NASA officials said the issue had been corrected.
Dominick, who was meant to accompany Dyson during the fateful spacewalk, reiterated that during any spacewalk, the stakes are incredibly high.
“It’s one of those things that we are always at every second — or every point in a process — ready to stop, or ready to turn in another direction, or work a contingency procedure,” Dominick told reporters last week. “And that is exactly what we did.”
Meanwhile, the pressure on NASA to introduce a new and updated spacesuit is growing. The space agency chose two private space companies to develop new spacesuits in 2022, which would not only allow astronauts to perform spacewalks outside of the ISS but also walk on the Moon.
One of those companies, Collins Aerospace, backed out of the deal this past summer. But the other one, Axiom Space, appears to be making steady progress. Last month, the firm showed off a suit designed to protect astronauts during NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, the first planned lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, which is tentatively scheduled for 2026.
But even Axiom Space is facing some serious financial trouble. As Forbes reported in September, the startup has been struggling to pay the bills and laid off at least a hundred employees.
Even the space station itself is looking worse for wear. Cracks and leaks affecting the Russian segment of the aging International Space Station were deemed a “top safety risk” by NASA’s inspector general earlier this year. Officials have warned of the “possibility of a catastrophic failure” — a worrying sign that the station’s days could soon be numbered years, even before it’s scheduled to be deorbited.
More on space suits: The Company NASA’s Hired to Build the Next Space Station Seems to Be in Big Trouble, Firing 100 Employees and Unable to Pay Bills
