Since the day of the Apollo missions, Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs) have become the quintessential spacesuits – but the world has changed in the last 50 years, and the next generation of astronauts going to the Moon needs a new version. Axiom and Prada have unveiled this new spacesuit, and it looks great.
Called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the suit is like a personalized spacecraft. There’s no tethering to life support like the SpaceX extravehicular activity suit: this suit comes with inbuilt nutrition, CO2 scrubbing, communication, and biometric monitoring, as well as textiles and boots that can withstand lunar temperatures and terrains. The mission will send the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon – we can almost see them hopping about with this suit.
The plan is currently to have astronauts on the surface of the Moon in 2026, but this is looking increasingly unlikely given that the progress for SpaceX’s Starship has not been as fast as expected. Starship will ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back.
The AxEMU suit is described as being evolvable, scalable, and adaptable.
Image Credit: Axiom
The spacesuit too has been a source of delays. Originally, Artemis III was going to happen this year. Then, in 2021, NASA’s suits were said to not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest. In 2022, NASA selected Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop and provide astronauts with next-generation spacesuit and spacewalk systems, to be used both in orbit and on the Moon.
Axios showed a prototype last year before getting the Italian fashion house Prada involved. Prada has plenty of experience with technical engineering problems – they built a sailboat racing syndicate in the late 1990s that continues to sail today. Italy’s Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli beat Britain’s Athena Pathway to win the inaugural Puig Women’s America’s Cup just a few weeks ago.
“Going beyond our limits is one of the company’s values that perfectly reflects the spirit of the Prada brand and my parents’ vision. I’m very proud of the result we’re showing today, which is just the first step in a long-term collaboration with Axiom Space. We’ve shared our expertise on high-performance materials, features, and sewing techniques, and we learned a lot. I’m sure we’ll continue to explore new challenges, broaden our horizons, and build new scenarios together,” Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada Group Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, said in a statement.
The AxEMU suit is near its final development stage. A pressurized simulation – the first since the Apollo era – has been completed successfully and it is expected to enter a critical review phase next year, before hopefully getting the full seal of approval.
The spacesuit was presented at the International Astronautical Congress, organized by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and hosted by Milan in its 75th edition. If you are in the Northern Italian city, you can see the spacesuit freely at the center of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
