This may look like an
astronaut training for the Olympics, but that's not
what's really happening here. For the ISS, you want a
rigid lower half with the ability to rotate around
the waist and then a consistent working
envelope. Which is about right here in front of you.
Easy to translate along the handrails. So low torque in
the upper joints. Good dexterity in the
gloves is a big one. Eric Valis is a senior
systems engineer. He's been testing out a
prototype of a new spacesuit, which NASA hopes
to use on the International Space Station by 2026. The spacesuits that are
being used now in the International Space Station
by NASA are suits that were really designed in the
seventies. These are suits that were originally
designed for the Space Shuttle program. Due to the
lack of funding, NASA kept working on them, kept
repairing them and maintaining them for all
these many years. But really, these are suits
that are at the end of their useful life. NASA's tried to updated its
suits in the past. A 2021 report by NASA's
Office of Inspector General found that NASA has spent
over a decade and an estimated $420 million to
develop a next-generation replacement for its aging
spacesuits, but failed to produce any operational
suits. Estimates show that by the
time new spacesuits are actually in use, NASA will
have spent more than a billion dollars on the
redesign and production. There were two different
issues. One was the lack of
funding. NASA, they had to get funds, you know, from
sometimes from other projects to to fund their
suit. And the second problem was
that there was no destination. The projects
of NASA have been moving through different political
agendas during the last few years. And something that
you need in any scientific and technological
organization is a purpose and a timeline. NASA is now going another
route, contracting with commercial companies to
make and maintain its new suits. So without further ado, I'm
very happy to announce that the awardees will be Axiom
Space and Collins Aerospace Industry Team. CNBC got a rare look inside
Collins Aerospace's new 120,000-square-foot
manufacturing and testing facility located at the
Houston Spaceport in Texas, where the company showed us
its new spacesuit. NASA's current spacesuits,
known as extravehicular mobility units, or EMUs in
NASA's speak, are very complex. The current spacesuit has
roughly 18,000 components that make it up, and the
interior volume of the suit is roughly equivalent to
the size of a small refrigerator, about 5.5
cubic feet. There have been a number of
safety concerns over the years due to the aging
spacesuits. A final investigation is in
following the near-drowning in space of that Italian
astronaut doing a spacewalk outside the International
Space Station. His equipment failed him. In fact, they say it was
his calm demeanor that probably saved his life
after his helmet filled with water. In 2022, NASA temporarily
suspended all spacewalks following another incident
where an astronaut's helmet filled with water. We're starting to see some
degradation of performance, some components that need
to be replaced. So on Space Station, we're
really watching very, very closely the performance of
the EMUs while they are still on orbit. In the meantime, these new
suits, for this particular failure of water in the
helmet, the new designs are designed such that that
failure mechanism cannot occur. Inventory issues are also a
problem. In 2019, NASA was forced to
cancel what would have been the first all-female
spacewalk on the International Space Station
because the agency did not have the proper spacesuit
sizes available for both female astronauts. In the beginning of human
space exploration, the spacesuits were custom
made. With the beginning of the
Space Shuttle Program, there was this idea of abandoning
the custom size system and going to small, medium and
large. That worked for a while. But as our astronaut corps
is getting more and more diverse, the sizes don't
work anymore. NASA's Office of Inspector
General also noted that of the original 18 primary
life support system units, only 11 remain in NASA's
inventory to support the ISS program, with only four of
these units actually on the ISS at any given time for
astronauts to use during spacewalks. These are suits that were
originally designed not to be serviced in space, but
to be serviced here on Earth because they were dependent
on the Space Shuttle. So now it kind of changed
the objective because they have to keep them up there. And the astronauts are the
only ones who can repair and maintain them. So the
number is very, very minimal. The portable life support
system or PLSS resembles a bulky backpack and is one
of the two main components of the spacesuit or EMU. The PLSS houses a variety
of components that perform functions needed to keep an
astronaut alive in space, including providing oxygen,
maintaining body temperature, and removing
carbon dioxide buildup from the spacesuit. The second
major component is the pressure garment system, or
PGS, which is the white garment that surrounds
astronauts. Its main purpose is to maintain appropriate
pressure around astronauts' bodies to keep them alive
in the vacuum of space, as well as protect them from
orbital debris. Underneath the PGS,
astronauts don a liquid cooling and ventilation
garment through which cool water flows to help
regulate their body temperature. The new suit
designs follow a similar suit structure, but are
modernized. There's just normal, what we
call obsolescence issues, certain parts we just can't
get anymore. And so we are building a
new suit so that we can start using new components,
take advantage of all of the new technologies that are
available to us now that just simply weren't
available nearly 50 years ago. Under the Exploration
Extravehicular Activity Services Contract or xEVAs,
NASA is providing Collins and Axiom, along with a
number of their industry partners, with up to $3.5
billion through 2034. Axiom won the first $228.5
million contract to design the suits that will be used
during NASA's Artemis Moon missions. And Collins won
the second $97.2 million contract to design and
develop a new generation of suits for the International
Space Station. In addition to making the
spacesuits, Collins and Axiom will be tasked with
providing maintenance and parts to keep the suits in
working condition, as well as conducting training and
operational support for NASA's staff. The beauty of this contract
is the functional requirements for these two
suits are very, very close. So at any given time we
could ask either of those contractors to actually
start working on the other, what we call, platforms. And we also have, what we
call, an on ramp clause in the contract, which means
if another company comes into play and they have the
capability to compete, we can actually bring them on
to the contract and allow them to compete on task
orders as well. Kearney says the continued
competition helps incentivize the contractors
to perform on cost and schedule and ultimately
helps keep the expense to the government down. In
addition to the fiscal support, NASA also provided
the vendors with access to data from the
organization's own suit development efforts through
its xEMU project. What we basically did was
take that design and we made it available to industry
because we put a lot of of work and taxpayer money
into developing that system. And so as industry came in
and proposed on the Artemis suits, they were able to
use any of the data we had available from the xEMU
development effort. Axiom Space would not give
CNBC a sneak peek of its spacesuit designs prior to
a public reveal. To design this new
spacesuit, Collins Aerospace is working with longtime
partner ILC Dover, as well as Oceaneering. Collins,
which is part of aerospace and defense giant, Raytheon
Technologies, is responsible for the life support
system, while ILC Dover is in charge of devising the
pressure garment. Oceaneering will handle
spacesuit and vehicle interface capabilities. The companies have a long
history of working with NASA. We were actually selected to
design and develop and provide those spacesuits
for the Apollo mission, along with our partner, ILC
Dover. We were actually also
selected to design and develop the Space Shuttle
EMU or extravehicular mobility unit. ILC Dover and Collins also
designed the spacesuits that astronauts currently use on
the ISS. One striking difference,
though, is the weight. The current EMU weighs
about 275 pounds on Earth, significantly heavier than
the prototype that CNBC saw. There are also other
upgrades. This helmet is different
than the one that's used on the EMU now. It offers a
better range of visibility. It has protective visors to
protect from the sun's radiation and glare. The upper torso is
adjustable, so it fits crew members better and can be
adjusted while they're on orbit or during a mission
to help prevent shoulder injuries and to make their
EVA more comfortable for them. The upper arm is also
new to this architecture. It provides a better range
of motion and a lower torque motion than the current
EMU. Ferl says that while the
current EMU fits the fifth to 95th percentile of
astronauts, this new suit is designed to fit the first
to 99th percentile of astronauts using fewer
parts. As a result, 30% less
hardware needs to be launched into space,
meaning lower launch costs and decreased crew training
time. Another big improvement in
this new generation of suits is their increased mobility
and range of motion. Things like standing up, you
really got to find the angles to rotate your body,
but it's definitely something that we couldn't
do before in the EMU. Extended range of motion
becomes particularly important for planetary
exploration. Though Collins' contract
with NASA calls for making spacesuits for the
International Space Station, the company and its
partners are designing the suit with future planetary
missions, like trips to Mars and the moon, in mind. For something like the Moon
or Mars, definitely the less restriction you have in the
lower body, the better. Being able to catch
yourself if you start to fall is a big plus,
especially with all the dust concerns. So good mobility. Stabilization is important. One of the biggest
technological challenges for going back to the moon is
the dust dust particles, which are like the
consistency of talcum powder. They sieve through
any fabric, so the fabric has to be coated or solid
against the intrusion of dust particles. A lot of the lessons learned
from Apollo need to be applied and incorporated,
so greater mobility, reduced mass, greater connectivity
for the astronauts. They need a better ability
to see what is going on with our suits, communicate with
each other, because as we continue to go further and
further from Earth, you're going to have to have all
of that capability, really self-contained. Crew
members need to be able to operate somewhat
independently from Earth. Something else that suit
makers have to consider is the length of time that
astronauts will be spending on missions. When we think about some of
those longer duration missions, some of the other
aspects that we've incorporated is really just
the maintainability. The ability to do
maintenance at lower levels and enable that work to be
done at the destination. So we've incorporated
modularity and open architecture. So as new
technologies are introduced, they can be incorporated
into the suit. Under the contract
stipulations, NASA has asked Axiom to deliver the suits
for its Artemis Moon mission by August 2025. While Collins' ISS
spacesuits are scheduled for delivery by 2026. Prior to being worn by
astronauts on missions, the suits have to undergo
extensive testing. We require crew member
testing in the pressure garment to make sure
they're meeting the mobility requirements. And then we
also require testing what we call relevant environments. So that could be a thermal
vacuum chamber, that could be in the NBL, that could
be actually testing on orbit on Space Station. Since NASA's purchasing its
suits from Collins and Axiom as a service, the vendors
are free to make additional suits for non-NASA
customers as well. Though Collins would not
disclose the names of any of its other customers, the
company says it's speaking with about 8 to 10
companies who are interested in their spacesuit
services. The new customers that we're
looking at are not just the current batch of commercial
space customers. There are countries that
are looking to be involved in space that were not in
the past able to participate. And as space
commercializes and becomes more affordable, those
countries now have the opportunity to step in. Romero also predicts that
the design of these new spacesuits will continue to
evolve to fit the new use cases of its broader
customer base. Today, we use it for
maintenance and repair, very little for experiential
activities where you're going out and doing space
tourism. That's really not a part of
EVA today, but that probably will become a part of EVA
in the future. Future programs will have
more interaction with robotics, so our suit needs
to be in a position to be able to communicate with
the robotic systems and be able to safely operate
around a robot. And it could be big
business. The space tourism market is poised to reach
$4 billion by 2030. NASA is also looking beyond
commercial companies for ideations of future
spacesuits. In 2020, Pablo de León and his team at the
Space Flight Laboratory at the University of North
Dakota won a $750,000 NASA grant to develop a new
3D-printed spacesuit prototype for Mars and
beyond. De León has worked on a
number of NASA spacesuit projects in the past, but
says this one's a little different. Some of the advantages will
be first to make repeatable manufacturing. The second
will be that you can scan the body and then build a
suit that will be specifically designed
precisely to that particular astronaut. And the third
one is that once that our spaceflights go further
away from the Earth and we go, say to Mars for
example, we're more than one year away from our planet. And if we need a
replacement, say a glove or any other part of a
spacesuit, you know, we are one year away to get that
replacement. So what about if you can
build a machine that will put together your suits and
you bring the machine to Mars? De León adds that exploring
the surface of the moon and Mars will likely mean that
astronauts will be using the spacesuits much more
frequently. Going back to the moon will
require that we'll do explorations almost every
day or every two days. The same for Mars. Spacesuits, I think they
kind of hit a nerve with people just because there's
a very human element to them. It's exciting to work
on something that's so critical, that keeps crew
members alive and safe. I know it's a big
responsibility that we feel every day when we make
decisions in the designs. Yeah, it's really it's
really exciting.
