The Artemis Spacesuit
By Nivi Chozhan, Edited by Harini Akurathi & Jeet Parikh, Art by Cal Shin-Koh, Layout by Sahithi Lingampalli, & Blogged by Kavya Gurunath
By 2024, NASA’s team plans to send the first American women and American men to the moon’s surface. Equipped with the many enhanced features of the Artemis space suit, astronauts will be able to move freely with great mobility to work and collect samples from the moon’s surface. Engineers are hopeful that this design will uphold lunar weather, eventually, to be used on Mars.
Gloves
The infamous moon landing with Neil Armstrong and other astronauts displayed how these men bunny-hopped to get around. However, the new suit lets them walk on the moon. Additionally, the spacesuit has evolved to let the user use their fingers to pick up lunar substances like rocks and minerals. The gloves will also have heaters for fingers while maintaining efficiency to conduct experiments.
Backpack
The backpack, called the Portable Life Support System, accompanies the suit to be able to absorb carbon dioxide from space and transform it into life support for about six days before it inevitably cannot keep working. The pack allows astronauts to have breathable oxygen, and removes any other waste gases like CO2, odors, and moisture, essentially keeping a steady temperature inside the suit. It also warns if the system is failing or is on the brink of failing to work.
Pressure Garment
The pressure garment inside the suit allows for the moon walker to freely move. In addition, it protects them from space’s extreme temperatures of minus 250 degrees to 250 degrees. The suit is designed to withstand these extreme temperatures. The pressure garment contains four parts; the helmet, the upper torso, lower torso and cooling garment. In particular, due to new bearing placements in the suit, the upper torso allows the astronaut to lift anything above their heads therefore increasing their mobility. Through many missions to lunar surfaces, scientists have learned that there are shards of glass-like material in the soil. In order to prevent any harm to the crew, the Apollo team adapted to this concern by filtering it through a dust feature to prevent astronauts from inhaling it and, in turn, harming the life support system.
Communication
Without communicating with mission control back at Earth and the people spotting you while you’re on a spacewalk, what would happen? To prevent any mishaps, the previous teams designed the spacesuit to have a built-in headset on their “snoopy caps.” However, astronauts complained that the headsets became uncomfortable and sweaty, and the microphone attached to it does not catch their voice while they are moving. Thus, the Apollo team created a new audio system that has multiple microphones. They precisely track the user’s voice and allow anyone listening in to carefully monitor them and have a better system to communicate.
Interchangeable Parts
In order to cut down on cost, the team decided to make parts from the astronaut suit reusable. This also helps because certain parts can be used in other explorations such as on the moon or even Mars. To explore Mars, different parts from the suit can be used best suitable for the environment to accommodate the high levels of carbon-dioxide. During a Martian winter, the outer garment used could potentially keep the astronaut from hypothermia, and in the summer season it will keep them from overheating. With new and improved pants and boots in the lower torso, it allows moonwalkers to move in a gravity free zone. The visor on the helmet will protect the pressurized bubble from dents, scratches, and other wear it incurs from harsh planetary body conditions (Melton 2019).
Spacesuit Testing
In order to test that the suit actually works, NASA had to test it and make sure there were no hazards. With the new suit, they recreated a spacecraft on Earth, testing the material and how everything worked. However, since Earth has gravity and space doesn’t, it’s hard to fully test the space suit out. Thus, the team plans to send the suit off to the International Space Station to prove that astronauts can use the suit. Once it is certified and approved, NASA has plans to send humans with the suit to the lunar surface by 2024.
The Apollo team has masterfully constructed a beautiful space suit that astronauts of all sizes, whether they are male or female, can use. The enhanced features allow for extra movement and to explore places we have never been to!
References
Melton, L. (2019, October 14). NASA’S Next Generation Spacesuit Gets 21st Century Upgrade. The Burnin. https://www.theburnin.com/science/nasa-xemu-spacesuit-next-generation-upgrades-artemis-missions-2019-10/
Moran, N. (2021, April 15). Artemis Spacesuits. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/artemis-spacesuits
Kowsky, J. (2019, October 16). From Mercury to Artemis: The evolution of the spacesuit in photos. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/mercury-starliner-evolution-spacesuit-ncsl718296
Apple, C. (2020, May 18). Out-Of-This-World Fashions. Spokesman. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/may/18/mercury-artemis-spacesuit-fashions-through-years/
Originally published at https://issuu.com.
