As part of the Artemis III mission which will again see humans set foot on the Moon, astronauts will be dressed in new, safer, more efficient spacesuits and more comfortable. But will they be available in time for the 2024 deadline? According to a new report, that will be impossible.
In space, suits look like real custom spaceships to keep astronauts alive. The current structures are the same as those used during the Apollo missions . They have been very effective in the past and they still are, but still have some limitations . As the United States had ambitions to return to and around the Moon, and later to fly to Mars, NASA therefore redesigned its equipment.
Over the past fourteen years, the agency has therefore developed next-generation spacesuits dubbed the Extravehicular Mobility Unit. These personalized suits thanks to 3D scans in order to perfectly match the astronauts' bodies will be designed to withstand extreme temperatures of -120°C in the shade and up to +120°C in the sun . The Life Support Portable system (which supplies oxygen to astronauts while venting exhaled CO2) will also be reduced, while allowing for longer spacewalks.
On the new side, the helmets will also benefit from a new audio system to facilitate communications and will be equipped with new quick-change visors. Finally, astronauts will benefit from new joints in the hips, knees and shoulders to move with greater freedom of movement.
On paper, these combinations have everything to please. However, their development has lagged. In 2017, and despite nearly 200 million dollars already spent for this purpose, an audit had already highlighted the fact that they could not be ready in time for the upcoming deadlines.
Since this report, NASA has spent an additional $220 million, for a total of $420 million , for the development of these uniforms. However, it still stuck. A new audit recently published suggests that given all the requirements to be met, the first two suits will not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest , mainly due to funding shortfalls, Covid-19 impacts and technical challenges.
In response to this report, Elon Musk offered the help of SpaceX. Nevertheless, it would seem that NASA's current schedule, implying that these first xEMU suits will be flight-ready by November 2024 for the return of the Americans to the Moon, therefore cannot be met.
Also, it's a safe bet that suit development won't be the only factor impacting the viability of the current Moon return schedule. agency. Delays related to the development of the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule or even the development of the lunar lander proposed by SpaceX, recently hampered by protests from Blue Origin, would also have prevented a landing in 2024, according to the report.
