Redesigning NASA's Aging Spacesuits For $3.5 Billion

Spacesuits currently used on the International Space Station have been around for decades and are showing their age.

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“Currently, NASA is using spacesuits that were designed in the 1970s, which are using them on the International Space Station, which is really a relic from that era. This is a suit that was originally designed as part of the space shuttle program. As a result of the lack of funding, NASA continued to work on the satellites, repaired them, and maintained them for all these many years, despite the lack of funding. In reality, however, these are suits that have reached the end of their useful life,” says Pablo De León, director of the Human Spaceflight Laboratory at the University of North Dakota, which is responsible for making these suits.

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As NASA's astronaut corps has become more diverse, it has faced a number of challenges in finding the appropriate sizes to fit it, as well as the degradation of some components of some of the suits. It has now been decided that NASA will turn to two commercial companies for the production and maintenance of its new generation of spacesuits: Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies. NASA, in conjunction with a number of their industry partners, is providing Collins and Axiom with up to $3.5 billion through the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services Contract, commonly known as xEVAS. NASA's Artemis moon missions will use the suits designed by Axiom, and Collins will design and develop a new generation of suits for the International Space Station with a $228.5 million contract. Since NASA purchases its suits from Collins and Axion as a service, the vendors are free to make additional suits for non-NASA customers

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"The beauty of this contract lies in the fact that the functional requirements for these two suits are very, very close to each other.". According to NASA's Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program Manager, Lara Kearney, it would not be unusual for us to request either of those contractors to actually begin working on the other platform whenever we feel like it," she says. "As part of this contract, we have what we call an on-ramp clause, which means that if another company enters the market and has the capability to compete, then we will actually be able to bring them into the contract and allow them to compete for task orders as well."

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As Kearney points out, the ongoing competition encourages contractors to perform on time and on budget, which ultimately reduces the cost of the government's expenses, which in turn helps the government to remain competitive. As a result of a collaboration between Collins Aerospace and partners ILC Dover and Oceaneering, Trade Algo received a behind-the-scenes look at the new suit that Collins Aerospace is developing. This new suit is expected to be used on the International Space Station by the year 2026, according to NASA.