NASA is
looking for a new space tailor to design and build the spacesuits to be worn by
future astronauts as they bounce around the surface of the moon.
The U.S. agency
called on prospective spacesuit designers Tuesday to submit proposals for
spaceworthy duds flexible enough to allow astronauts to work outside NASA's
future Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) or on the lunar surface.
NASA plans
to award a contract for the new spacesuits in June 2008, and fly them aboard
the first piloted Orion capsule missions to the International Space Station
(ISS).
"We'd
want to have them there even if we didn't plan to do a contingency spacewalk
from the spacecraft," NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean, of the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told SPACE.com.
According
to NASA's request for proposals, the agency is seeking a contractor to design,
develop, test and produce multipurpose spacesuits for its Orion spacecraft
crews. The Orion CEV is NASA's space shuttle successor and is expected to make
its first crewed flights to the ISS no later than 2015 and ferry astronauts
back to the moon by 2020.
For
ISS-bound flights, the spacesuits would protect up to six crewmembers against cabin
leaks and allow astronauts to perform unplanned spacewalks, NASA said. The
four-person lunar missions, meanwhile, would require a quartet of new
spacesuits versatile enough for use during the weightless flight to and from
the moon, yet rugged enough to withstand at least one week of multiple
excursions in one-sixth Earth gravity on
the lunar surface, the space agency added.
The lunar
spacesuits may also be employed for multiple outings on the moon during
long-duration missions of up to six months in the future, NASA officials said.
NASA is
seeking lightweight
spacesuit systems that are simultaneously easy to maintain and quick to don
and doff, as well as comfortable to its astronaut wearer. Flexibility,
reliability, the ability to be upgraded, as well as work efficiency are key
attributes, the space agency said.
The test
and development phase of the new contract runs from June 2008 to September
2013, with a second option for spacesuit production extending until September
2018, according to NASA's call for proposals.
NASA
currently has supplies for about 12
different ensembles of its current spacesuit: the Extravehicular
Mobility Unit (EMU). The spacesuit consists of a hard upper torso, helmet
and mix-and-match arm, leg and glove components to suit individual astronauts.
Some of
those spacesuits are aboard the ISS today alongside their Russian-built Orlan
counterparts. But while the EMUs are currently NASA's go-to space garments for U.S. spacewalks
outside the agency's shuttles and the ISS, they were designed solely for use in
orbit and won't make the transition to the Orion spacecraft or future lunar
missions.
"They'll
still have some of the EMUs on the space station, but we won't be using them
with the CEV," Dean said.
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