Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
I must have been extra busy in August to have missed this predictable press release, but it is a comfort to know that they are fulfilling my cynical expectations, right on schedule.
Wardrobe issues.
Spacesuits and Other Issues Mean NASA Isn’t Landing on the Moon in 2024
There’s a lot of ideas out there about how to make spacesuits better. There’s the MIT-led plan to create shrink-wrapped spacesuits based on the concept of negative pressure. Or a South Dakota School of Mines & Technology contraption that creates a wearable body monitoring system for astronauts. Not to mention a slew of nearly 50 companies that have shown interest in developing a spacesuit for NASA to purchase.
However, I think NASA would be happy just to finish the designs it’s currently working on, the first new suits it’s developed in decades—like the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit. The xEMU is part of the next generation of the spacesuits already worn on the International Space Station, with upgrades that allow astronauts to not just survive on the Moon, but also live and work on it. The xEMUs and a set of new suits for onboard usage are a key part of the Artemis program, which was started by the Trump administration and aims to return humans to the moon by 2024.
Except it doesn’t seem like we’re going to the moon in 2024 after all—and the spacesuits are a big part of that delay.
