Tuesday Is Notional xEVA Spacesuit Day At NASA HQ
NASA Invites Media to Events Highlighting Spacesuits for Moon to Mars
“Media are invited to NASA Headquarters in Washington Tuesday, Oct. 15 to get an up-close look at the next generation spacesuits the first woman and next man to explore the Moon will wear as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The public event will take place at 2 p.m. EDT and feature NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who will host a demonstration with spacesuit engineers. The spacesuit demonstration will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.”
Exploration Extravehicular Activity (xEVA) Production and Services
“The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center is issuing this sources sought synopsis as a means of conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and the resources to support the requirement for Exploration Extravehicular Activity (xEVA) Production and Services. The result of this market research will contribute to determining the method of procurement.”
Exploration Extravehicular Activity (xEVA) Production and Services
“The purpose of this RFI is to inform industry of NASA’s Exploration Space Suit requirements and to collect industry input on key parameters that will help develop future acquisition plans for procuring the production and evolution of space suits and supporting equipment such as EVA tools and vehicle interface hardware. This future procurement instrument will be referred to as the xEVA Production and Services Contract.”
Exploration Extravehicular Activity (xEVA) Production and Services
Oops. Some things are sort of secret right now.
I want to see if they’ve made advances in the gloves, most of all.
The gloves they showed are standard phase VIs like they use on station, so probably not.
xEMU sounds like an insurance ad: “only pay for the [suit] you need!”
That was fast. Almost like they’ve been working on it for a while.
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
The suit they’re calling the xEMU used to be called the Z-2 suit… it was buit by a contractor three or four years ago… nothing “new” here.
Also at the xEMU media event. That new orange Orion IVA suit modified from the ACES suit seems like a waste. Either the Boeing Smurf suit or the SpaceX Starman suit will suffice for the limited IVA role.
I guess I don’t get it. NASA has been working on he next gen suit for 50 years. I think the ones they are showing now are the same ones they’ve been working on for years. Until the compete a contract and select the developer, and put dozens into production, then there is nothing new. Nothing has changed.
No, you get it. This is just the latest round of “Look at the cool new spacesuits we’re working on”. It’s the same thing NASA has done periodically since the space shuttle era EMUs became “operational”. The R&D teams have been funded at a low level ever since, but nothing has been fully developed. So, I don’t have much faith that this will go much more smoothly than the rest of the Artemis program (i.e. SLS/Orion) .