50 years in space

Q&A: Designing a 21st-century space suit

TalkBack E-mail del.icio.us Digg this

Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.

If you want to be among the next group of astronauts to traipse about the moon--or among those who later land on Mars--you'll need to dress the part.

That means having a space suit that doesn't just bundle you up against the extraterrestrial elements, but one that also lets you move freely and perhaps even gracefully as you perform your everyday exploratory tasks.

Dava Newman

Today's outer space outerwear won't cut it. As well as NASA's current space suit has performed, the so-called extravehicular mobility unit really wasn't designed for the movement and manual labor that shuttle and space station crews have undertaken. And it was built for microgravity environments, for astronauts floating around those orbiting vessels, not for the men and women who'll eventually be digging up moon rocks and sifting Martian soil for signs of water.

Enter the space suit designers. One of them is Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics, astronautics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her group at MIT has been working on a research project called the BioSuit, a distinctively form-fitting outfit that is meant to give its wearer much better mobility than current gear through its use of mechanical counterpressure--basically, squeezing down on the torso and limbs. By contrast, the EMU worn outside the space station is puffed up by gas pressurization.

The BioSuit won't be the actual suit worn back to the moon on NASA's Constellation missions, which are scheduled to begin with test flights in 2009, followed by flights to the International Space Station through the next decade and a return to the lunar surface around 2020. But it will likely give the space agency some ideas about what that space suit should look like and how it should be built.

Newman spoke to CNET News.com recently about how to tailor a space suit for locomotion and what it takes to get from prototype to flight suit.

Q: Can you describe the suit and what your group was aiming for with it?
Newman: We definitely were looking for some breakthrough design concepts and the technologies that might help us think about revolutionary suit concepts for 10 to 20 years out, a long-term horizon. You have to give (astronauts) a pressure suit. The conventional way is gas-pressurized suits that are fantastic--I'm in admiration of the current system--but now that we're going to go to the moon and Mars, how can we get mobility and flexibility? They're really paramount. They haven't been the showstoppers up in microgravity--different environment, different tasks to do--but now we need locomotion capability for the moon.

One of the key design features with the BioSuit is the way it's form-fitting. How does that work?
Newman: We get great mobility and flexibility. You can bend down, you can get down on your knee and pick up a rock, so we have significantly increased amounts of mobility of the limb joints.

Is that the biggest challenge in trying to redesign a space suit?
Newman: It depends which approach you take. We've taken a mechanical counterpressure approach, which means basically you apply the pressure directly to the skin. So constant pressure production is probably one of the biggest technological challenges, for sure.

As form-fitting as the BioSuit is, you still have that big, bulky helmet. Is there any way to get headgear that's not quite as disproportionate?
Newman: We think it'll be more like a conventional helmet. Not that it's bulky. Of course you'd like lightweight systems but you want to give them as much vision as possible. If you did true mechanical counterpressure for the whole suit, you'd shrink-wrap the head as well, but there's no advantage to doing that, and there are a lot of disadvantages. It's very hard to get something that tight, say, for the eye sockets. There's really no reason to do mechanical counterpressure on the head and there are good reasons to use a conventional gas-pressurized helmet design. It's comfortable.

Where our contributions come in into the helmet is more the information technology. Right now there's really no information technology displayed within the suit. So that's been a research theme for us, for sure--what information should you display to the astronaut in the suit, and how would we do that? How's my heart rate, how much oxygen do I have left? You maybe call up the topographical map of the moon, and what you need to get done, what information you need to do your exploration.

So the conventional helmet--sure, in terms of the bubble design, give them a large periphery, but we think then about layering the different kind of information content onto a helmet.

The space suits of today, they've been around for a while--are they just reaching the end of the line for what they can provide to astronauts, in terms of the kinds of missions that are coming up?
Newman: Yeah, basically the current space suit was fielded for the space shuttle. It's a great outfit, a great system, for the shuttle, and then it's performed remarkably well for the space station. The design requirements initially were not for a space station, multimonth suit in microgravity. It's really adapted and performed for changing missions, which went from shuttle to station. We'll be able to continue using both NASA's suit and the Russian suit to get the work done on the space station to do extravehicular activity, but it's definitely not a locomotion suit. You can't walk or lope or bound in it. A few steps is about the capability right now.

Next page: No easy task

Stories

Day 1: Private industry moves to take over space race
The space race taking shape in the private sector today is due in large part to boyhood dreams of becoming astronauts.

Day 1: Space entrepreneur shoots for the moon
Space Adventures CEO Peter Diamandis talks about the future of private space travel to the moon and beyond.

Day 1: Key milestones in space exploration
A timeline of some of the events that brought humans into space and will guide where we go next.

Day 2: Silicon galaxy
Technologies developed by NASA have led to some of the most important commercial innovations to come out of Silicon Valley.

Day 2: The satellite age
The commercial satellite market has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, but future growth could suffer.

Day 3: Do we need NASA?
Is NASA still worth spending more than $16 billion in taxpayer money each year?

Day 3: Designing a 21st-century space suit
MIT professor Dava Newman tells how the form-fitting BioSuit will help give NASA a ready-to-wear outfit for the moon and Mars.

Photo galleries

Memories from the space age
CNET News.com readers (and writers) share their memories from the early days of space exploration. October 5, 2007

Japan probe approaches moon
A new space race is getting under way, with as many as five nations expecting to land hardware on the moon within five years. October 4, 2007

Who's who in space travel
The private sector is laying the groundwork for a new era of space exploration. October 3, 2007

A half-century of space flight
We take a look at how the ships that enable space exploration are evolving. October 1, 2007

Strange visitors to other planets
The first Voyager spacecraft left Earth 30 years ago. Now, nearly 10 billion miles from home, they aren't finished yet.August 28, 2007

Building a better space suit
At MIT and the University of North Dakota, researchers are trying out new designs to clothe astronauts heading to Mars. July 18, 2007

Stellar views from the Hubble at 17
NASA and ESA celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's anniversary with colliding stars and supernovas.April 25, 2007

Related stories

NASA pundits launch debate over space flight

Scientists ponder next 50 years of space exploration

SpaceShipOne's Rutan: Space resorts in 25 years

Cold War-era memories meet the future

NASA: Limited budget could lead to gap in manned missions

News from around the Web

The race to space: Recalling Sputnik
The Baltimore Sun

Sputnik stunned the world, and its rocket scared the Pentagon
Wired

Science Times special coverage
New York Times

The next 50 years in space
Associated Content

Happy birthday, Sputnik! (Thanks for the Internet)
Computerworld

Thank Sputnik for today's orbital freedom
Christian Science Monitor

Credits

Editors: Jennifer Guevin, Jim Kerstetter
Design: Andrew Ballagh
Production: Madeleine Kempton