Italian luxury group Prada and Houston-based startup Axiom Space unveiled on Wednesday the design of a spacesuit that will be used for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission to the moon that is planned for 2026, Reuters reports.
In its outward appearance, the spacesuit does not stray too far from what astronauts have worn in the past. It is the familiar bulky white suit, with added red trim and grey patches on the knees and elbows.
The new Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), as the suit is known, was showcased at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan. It aims to combine highly engineered functionality and aesthetics to deal with challenging lunar conditions.
Artemis 3 is planned as the first astronaut moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The spacesuits were made to withstand extreme temperatures at the lunar south pole and endure the coldest temperatures in the permanently shadowed regions for at least two hours, the two companies said in a joint statement.
