NASA recently selected American space infrastructure developer Axiom Space and aerospace and defence firm Collins Aerospace to provide spacesuits and spacewalk systems for future Moon and Mars missions. The two firms will help advance spacewalking capabilities in low-Earth orbit and at the Moon, by buying services which provide astronauts with next generation spacesuit and spacewalk systems to work outside the International Space Station, explore the lunar surface on Artemis missions, and prepare for human missions to the Red Planet. The Artemis mission aims to land the first woman and first person of colour on the lunar surface.
What Are NASA’s Plans?
In a NASA statement, Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that with these awards, the US space agency and its partners will develop advanced, reliable spacesuits that allow humans to explore the cosmos unlike ever before. She added that by partnering with industry, NASA is efficiently advancing the necessary technology to keep Americans on a path of successful discovery on the space station and as the space agency sets its insights on exploring the lunar surface.
What Is The xEVAS Contract?
Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace were chosen from the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) contract solicitation, which enables selected vendors to complete task orders for missions that will provide a full suite of capabilities for NASA's spacewalking needs during the period of performance through 2034. Also, the contact has a combined maximum potential value of $3.5 billion for all task orders. According to NASA, the first task orders to be completed under the contract will include the development and services for the first demonstration outside the space station in low-Earth orbit and for the Artemis III lunar landing.
The partners have invested a significant amount of their own money into development, will own the spacesuits, and are encouraged to explore other non-NASA commercial applications for data and technologies they co-develop with the US space agency.
What Will The Commercial Partners Do?
The commercial partners will be responsible for design, development, qualification, certification, and production of spacesuits, and support equipment to enable space station and Artemis missions, as per key agency requirements.
Mark Kirasich, deputy associate administrator of NASA's Artemis Campaign Development Division, said the commercial partnerships will help realise the space agency's human exploitation goals, and that NASA looks forward to using these services for its continued presence in low-Earth orbit and its upcoming achievement of returning American astronauts to the Moon's surface.
Kirasich further said that NASA is confident its collaboration with industry and leveraging its expertise gained through over 60 years of space exploration will enable the space agency to achieve the goals together.
NASA will continue to make flight- and ground-based test data from NASA-led space station spacewalks and the agency's Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) development project, which is an EVA spacesuit designed for space walking in LEO, near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) and on the surface of the Moon and Mars. Making flight- and ground-based test data from NASA-led space station spacewalks and xEMU will encourage an accelerated transition to industry while reducing risks and providing access to previous investments of the space agency in spacesuit development.
The contract was designed by NASA to endure and evolve with needs of the agency and space industry, and also provides the agency with an optional mechanism to add additional vendors that were not selected in the original award announcement as the commercial space services market evolves.
The EVA and Human Surface Mobility Program at NASA Johnson manages the xEVAS contract.