Houston-based company Axiom Space will showcase prototypes of its lunar spacesuits for Artemis missions on the moon during a live event on Wednesday (March 15) starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT). You can watch the webcast here on Space.com via NASA Television.
Axiom Space will build the spacesuits for Artemis 3, which will land at the moon’s south pole with astronauts on board as early as December 2025. The company was selected for the mission, the first to put humans on the moon since 1972, from a larger NASA spacesuit contract on 7 .September 2022.
Related: Axiom Space develops in-house spacesuits to prepare future stations
NASA selected Axiom and a team led by Collins Aerospace to develop and build spacesuits for future missions to the moon and the International Space Station in June 2022. The money will be provided via “task orders” with a total value across all contracts of $3.5 billion until 2034.
The Artemis 3 award has a base value of $228.5 million and is the first such task order in the manifest. Axiom hasn’t made spacesuits for NASA before, but the company is an agency partner in other ventures; for example, Axiom’s Ax-1 mission drove the first commercial crewed mission to the ISS in 2022 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Ax-2 will lift off later this year.
Longer term, Axiom plans a commercial hub on the ISS that will include a film studio. Eventually, Axiom’s modules will detach from the ISS and become an independent private space station in low Earth orbit.
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“Scheduled during the unveiling activities are remarks from NASA and Axiom Space experts, a suit demonstration, and question-and-answer sessions with media and students,” NASA said in a March 8 statement (opens in new tab) about the event on 15 March.
Participants at the event will include:
- Bob Cabana, Associate Administrator, NASA
- Vanessa Wyche, Center Director, NASA Johnson Space Center
- Lara Kearney, Manager, Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, NASA Johnson
- Kate Rubins, NASA astronaut
- Michael Suffredini, President and CEO, Axiom Space
- Mark Greeley, Extravehicular Activity Program Manager, Axiom Space
- Russell Ralston, Deputy Program Manager for Extravehicular Activity, Axiom Space
- Peggy Whitson, Axiom-2 Commander, Axiom Space
- John Shoffner, Axiom-2 pilot, Axiom Space
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why am I taller? (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).