NASA Shows Off New Spacesuit And Orion Crew Survival System Suit

NASA is working on new spacesuits that will be used to take astronauts into space and to the surface of the Moon and Mars. The red, white, and blue spacesuit is a prototype of the new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit or xEMU. That spacesuit is worn in the photos and video below by Kristine Davis, a spacesuit engineer at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

The orange spacesuit is called the Orion Crew Survival System suit and is worn by Dustin Gohmert, Orion Crew Survival Systems Project manager at the Johnson Space Center. The two new spacesuits are Artemis generation spacesuits. Artemis is the name for the mission to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024.

The orange spacesuit will be used for launch and reentry aboard the NASA Orion spacecraft. The larger red, white, and blue spacesuit is for exploring the lunar surface once the astronauts arrive there. xEMU looks very similar to the existing spacesuits that astronauts use when they have to go outside the ISS.

However, xEMU is designed specifically for improved comfort, fit, and more mobility on the surface of the Moon. xEMU was designed by NASA specifically to provide Astronauts of all sizes a customized fit. The spacesuit is designed with interchangeable parts that allow the suit to work both in space and on the surface of the Moon.

NASA plans to evolve the suit for use on Mars in future missions with additional technology for life support on the Red Planet. In the video, it's easy to tell that the new spacesuit offers much-improved mobility and movement compared to the current spacesuit. It's vastly improved compared to the spacesuits in the '60s that took the first humans to the Moon.