NASA’s Spacesuit Problem Joalda Morancy
is a second year at the University of Chicago, majoring in Geophysics. Her interests are topics within astronautics, planetary science, and astrophysics. On campus, she runs a club called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), which is a group that promotes students to make an impact on space exploration. Along with writing for SISR, Joalda participates in University Theater by serving as an assistant scenic designer. In her free time, she likes to scroll mindlessly through Twitter and play video games.
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n March 29th, 2019, Anne McClain and Christina Koch almost made space history. The two NASA astronauts were scheduled to complete history’s first all-female spacewalk, which would have made strides not only within the aerospace community but also for women in STEM. About a week before the spacewalk, however, NASA canceled it due to the unavailability of specific spacesuit sizes for women.2 The subsequent backlash led to a discussion about how exactly NASA is managing its current available spacesuits. How could a problem as simple as sizing lead to the cancellation of a historic spacewalk? This cancellation raises questions about spacesuit development, and how complications such as funding, systematic risk, and political decisions shape and constrain scientific exploration. A spacesuit is a pressurized garment used to protect humans from outer space—like a tiny spacecraft made for your body, actively
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THE TRIPLE HELIX Spring 2020
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