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NASA’s Spacesuit Problem
NASA’s
Spacesuit Problem
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On March 29th, 2019, Anne McClain and Christina Koch Joalda almost made space history. The two NASA astronauts were scheduled to complete history’s first all-female spaceMorancy 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 walk, 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. 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. 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
working to keep you alive. There are two categories of spacesuits: intravehicular suits and extravehicular suits. Intravehicular activity (IVA) suits are meant only to be worn inside a pressurized spacecraft, allowing them to be lightweight and more flexible. Astronauts use extravehicular activity (EVA) suits outside the spacecraft on spacewalks or during planetary exploration.
Current EVA suits aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs). They first came into use over forty years ago, but they were only supposed to last fifteen years. Since then, the availability of spacesuits has decreased due to various failures and prolonged use by astronauts. Limited launch availability impacts how often they can switch out spacesuits, leading to ignored scheduled maintenance.
Inadequacies in EMU design have recently
come to light because of their limited availability. These restraints can include health risks as well as design flaws like upper-torso sizing limits, which caused the cancellation of the all-female spacewalk. The upper-torso design does not necessarily accommodate non-male bodies and comes in only three sizes: medium, large, and extra-large. Studies by NASA showed that both age and sex were important factors in spacesuit production. 4
Timelines for development have also been in question as NASA debates which explo
Credit: NASA Spacesuit engineer Amy Ross, left, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, second from left, watch as spacesuit engineer Kristine Davis wearing a ground prototype of NASA’s new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), and Orion Crew Survival Systems Project Manager Dustin Gohmert, wearing the Orion Crew Survival System suit, right, wave after being introduced by the administrator.
ration missions to pursue. Currently, they are allocating resources to the Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman on the moon by 2024. NASA
has also been actively working on their “Journey to Mars,” in which they plan to land on Mars sometime in the 2030s. For each of these missions, NASA has to create different types of spacesuits in order to fit the exact needs of the respective project. For example, the current EMUs used by NASA lack some of the flexibility needed to explore a planetary surface. A new spacesuit necessitates new technologies which in turn require dedicated time by its manufacturer to account for all possible risks and design faults.
However, NASA has not followed this method of spacesuit manufacturing linearly, having run into issues with budget misallocation and unclear mission goals. In October 2010, NASA canceled the Constellation program, which sought to complete missions that would land astronauts once again on the moon by 2020 and eventually on Mars. But even after this, NASA continued working on the Constellation Space Suit System (CSSS), a contract made with a commercial company to make spacesuits unique to the program. The contract, worth up to $148 million dollars, stayed active until January 2016. By then, NASA had spent a total of $135.6 million dollars. 4
This spending continued even while
NASA was working on the Advanced Space Suit Project, which had the goal of designing spacesuits to fit the objectives of Journey to Mars. This spacesuit would fit the needs of both Mars and cislunar space. NASA had also been working on the Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS). This is an IVA suit meant to be worn by astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft. The OCSS is a modified replacement of the Advanced Crew Escape System (ACES), which were the puffy orange spacesuits that astronauts would wear during the Space Shuttle program. The cost of the Advanced Space Suit Project totals around $51.6 million and, for the OCSS, $12 million. Compared to the CSSS budget, clearly NASA had not been spending their money wisely. 4 Instead of choosing to advance new spacesuit projects, they instead chose to follow the dead CSSS contract, wasting
References
Recently, NASA completed both the Advanced Space Suit Project and the OCSS. 3 They unveiled the two spacesuits back in October 2019, most likely due to the recent push to advertise the upcoming Artemis moon missions. The Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) has improvements in both comfort and fit, and now has the option of customizing each suit for astronauts of all sizes—a major upgrade from the old EMUs.
Not to mention, in February 2020, Congress granted a 12% increase in NASA’s budget, which allowed the Artemis program to achieve its funding goals. 1 The agency has not seen such levels of government funding since the full-fledged funding they received in the 1960s for the Apollo missions. These new strides for the agency could mean that we are less likely to see the mistakes that occurred with older spacesuits with the new models. With a direct exploration mission goal and increased funding, we should be seeing fewer issues regarding spacesuit development and management and NASA on its way to more functional, cost-effective spacesuits.
1 Berger, Eric. “NASA puts a price on a 2024 Moon landing—$35 billion.” ArsTechnica, 10 February 2020. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/nasa-puts-a-price-on-a-2024-moon-landing-35-billion/. Accessed 5 March 2020. 2 Fortin, Jacey and Karen Zraick. “First All-Female Spacewalk Canceled Because NASA Doesn’t Have Two Suits That Fit.” The New York Times, 25 March 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/science/ female-spacewalk-canceled.html. Accessed 5 March 2020. 3 McGlaun, Shane. “NASA Shows Off New Spacesuit and Orion Crew Survival System Suit.” Slash Gear, 16 October 2019. https://www.slashgear.com/nasa-shows-off-new-spacesuit-and-orion-crew-survivalsystem-suit-16595732/. Accessed 5 March 2020. 4 “NASA’s Management and Development of Spacesuits.” Office of Inspector General, NASA. April 26, 2017. https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-17-018.pdf. Accessed 5 March 2020.
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