NASA to Show Spacesuit for Artemis III Moonwalks on March 15

The first mission of the program, Artemis I, successfully went up there and then back down here just a few short months ago. It was a crucial mission, meant to show the world the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion capsule perched on top of it work just as they should. It was an uncrewed flight that more or less went without a hitch, and effectively opened the doors for Artemis II.

This one is scheduled to depart in about a year, and it will carry with it three Americans and one Canadian (their names will be revealed by NASA on April 3). These four people will travel to the Moon and far beyond it, but will not land there.

Sometime in 2025 (or later, depending on a variety of factors), Artemis III will actually land humans on the Moon. At the time of writing, two of the main elements needed to support it, the rocket and spaceship, are operational. The other two, the SpaceX lander and the spacesuits astronauts will wear while on the surface, are still being cooked up.

It’s the spacesuit that’s of concern to us today. We’ve known for a while the suits will be made by Axiom Space, and we also have a general idea of what they’ll be all about, thanks to a few details already made public, but so far we’re yet to see them with our own eyes.

NASA began its search for new spacesuits four years ago, when the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) project was announced. Keep in mind that at that time (and even now) we didn't have a Moon-rated spacesuit, and the ones used for International Space Station (ISS) spacewalks are a design that goes back all the way to the 1980s.

The xEMU needs to be able to support temperatures between minus 250 degrees F and up to 250 degrees (minus 156 to 121 degrees C), but also be able to resist the dusty surface of the Moon.

Astronauts will climb into the suits from the back, and they’ll be wrapped in a pressure garment meant to protect them from all the things that can kill them up there: extreme temperatures, radiation, micrometeorites, you name it. In the helmets, the snoopy cap headsets used in current designs to communicate will be replaced by voice-activated microphones.

But all of the above are just words on a screen, and they do little in the way of giving us a mental picture of the suit. Luckily, we’ll get just that on March 15, when NASA and Axiom Space will be showing a prototype of the Artemis III spacesuits for the first time.

We’ll of course be all over it, so stay tuned to see how the future of space exploration looks like.