Spacesuits need a new design, says NASA, because astronauts are going to space wearing 35-year-old, ‘sweat-stained
relics’ called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU). Only 11 of the original 18
EMU life-support backpacks, the most expensive and complicated part of a
spacesuit, are still in working order. For American astronauts, the EMU was
introduced in 1981. For Russian cosmonauts, the Orlan suit was introduced in 1977. So spacesuits will now receive a makeover.
NASA has already spent $200
million on its spacesuit renewal program (established in 2007), and the
first designs are ready for testing. “A spacesuit is actually an
anthropomorphic, miniature spacecraft with the complexity of a larger space
vehicle,” says engineer Vinita Marwaha Madil at the European Space Agency
(ESA). The
ESA has developed a “skinsuit” made from elastic material that replicates
gravity by putting just the right amount of pressure on the body, which should
counteract the muscle wastage and bone problems that result from a long journey
in microgravity.
NASA has contracted Boeing to make spacesuits, and the prototype
suit was released in January 2017: a bright blue suit made with lighter
materials and more flexible joints than previous suits. “In the last 60 years,
there’s been no suit lighter than this one,” says Kavya Manyapu, a Boeing
engineer. It has a soft helmet that is attached to the suit like a hood;
astronauts pull it over their heads and zip it down in an emergency. This “space
hoodie” design replaces the traditional “fish-bowl” helmets.
The Apollo astronauts (1963-1972) made only 18 moonwalks, but future
explorers would aim to do more, and may even build a moon base, as a launch
station for missions to Mars. The spacesuit technology developed during the
mid-20th century was originally designed for short-duration missions to the
moon. The suits were uncomfortable and tough to manoeuvre in, and the Apollo
astronauts couldn’t bend down to pick up rocks; they had to use a pole.
The new NASA spacesuits (called the Z-2 suit) will enable a
broader range of motion than previous suits, with a waist that can turn and
flex so that astronauts can look around and walk more easily.
Moon dust is also an issue. On Earth, tiny meteors burn up in
the atmosphere, but on the moon (which is airless), space debris can hit the
surface at 160,000 kilometres per hour. At this speed, rocks melt and smash
into jagged dust particles. This dust is not only abrasive, but has a static
electric charge, and so it sticks to helmets and suit joints. Breathing it
gives people “space hay fever”. A new electrodynamic dust shield that casts an
electric field over solar panels, electronics and potentially spacesuits to
prevent dust from accumulating on them, will soon be tested on the
International Space Station (ISS). More radical anti-dust measures will be
included in the next-generation spacesuit design.
The Z-2 moon spacesuit may be ready for the ISS by 2020, but
NASA also has another spacesuit research project, with Mars in mind. On Mars,
everything will be harder. The dust is less spiky than on the moon, but Martian
dust grains get more highly electrostatically charged as they rub together in
the thin, dry air, which might disrupt electronics if the dust enters a
spacecraft. The dust can also become acidic and corrosive when combined with
oxygen and water vapour, which spacesuits tend to be full of.
NASA’s Mars spacesuit research project is focusing on the
Prototype Exploration Suit (PXS), which is primarily a spacewalk suit, because
it is more flexible, but it is also a testbed for more speculative technology –
some of which might be useful on Mars.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom
(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest
Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The
Sudan Curse (2009).
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