WASHINGTON — As NASA grapples with more problems with the International Space Station’s space suit, the company it chose to develop replacement suits says it’s pulling back from the effort.
In a statement to SpaceNews on June 25, a spokesman for Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX Corp., said the company and NASA have agreed to “open up” work on developing spacesuits for the ISS under task orders that are part of a contract , commissioned two years ago. Reuters first reported that the company wanted out of the contract.
“After a thorough evaluation, Collins Aerospace and NASA have mutually agreed to exclude the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) procurement. Collins remains committed to supporting NASA and the human spaceflight programs,” the company said.
NASA announced in June 2022 that it had selected Collins and Axiom Space for the xEVAS program, which seeks to develop commercial suits to be offered to NASA as a service. NASA subsequently commissioned Collins to work on a suit for use on the ISS, while Axiom was commissioned to develop spacesuits for the Artemis lunar missions.
Collins has publicly reported good progress on that suit. In February, the company said it had completed tests of a prototype suit in parabolic aircraft flights that generate 20 seconds of microgravity at a time. “My honest opinion is that it’s a much more capable suit,” Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut who later became the chief test astronaut at Collins, said at the time.
The company did not disclose why it wanted to end work on the project. Industry sources said they believed Collins had suffered delays and cost overruns and concluded it was no longer feasible for the company to continue work on it, especially given the fixed-price nature of the contract.
NASA has not commented on Collins’ decision to end work on the suit or what steps, if any, will be taken to find a new suit developer. In addition to Axiom and Collins, SpaceX is independently developing its own spacesuit, which will be tested on the private astronaut Polaris Dawn mission flying aboard Crew Dragon. This mission is scheduled to launch as soon as mid-July.
NASA issued “cross-over” task orders to both Axiom and Collins last July, allowing Axiom to begin studying how it could adapt its lunar spacesuit for use on the ISS and Collins to adapt its ISS spacesuit for lunar missions. Axiom has focused on the Artemis suit, including a recent integrated test with NASA and SpaceX to demonstrate how the suits will integrate with the Starship lunar module and other elements of the Artemis 3 mission.
Collins’ announcement comes after NASA experienced two consecutive clean spacewalks from the ISS. NASA canceled the June 13 spacewalk after astronaut Matt Dominick reported a “suit discomfort” problem shortly before the spacewalk was scheduled to begin. NASA did not provide details about the specific problem with the suit.
NASA astronauts Tracy S. Dyson and Mike Barratt were scheduled to perform another spacewalk on June 24, completing the tasks planned for the earlier, delayed spacewalk. However, just as the external hatch to the airlock opened, Dyson reported a water leak when he severed the service and cooling umbilical line to his suit as planned.
“There’s literally water everywhere,” Dyson reported as the water turned to ice, forming a layer on her helmet visor. Reconnecting the line stopped the leak, but NASA canceled the spacewalk as a precaution. The agency said on June 25 that the astronauts inspected the suit and reviewed procedures for future spacewalks, but did not confirm whether the planned July 2 spacewalk would go ahead as scheduled.
The spacesuits currently in use on the station, known as extravehicular mobility units, or EMUs, are decades old and have suffered aging problems. In 2022, NASA delayed the use of the suits for routine spacewalks for several months after an astronaut reported seeing a thin layer of water on the inside of his visor at the end of the spacewalk. NASA concluded that “integrated system performance” rather than a specific hardware flaw caused this water to form.
NASA safety advisors have been warning for some time about the risks posed by aging EMUs. “It is an undisputed fact that the 40-year-old EMUs used in ISS operations are reaching the end of their useful lives,” NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel noted in a 2019 recommendation, calling for an “immediate transition” to new suits. before EVA risk [extravehicular activity] becomes unmanageable.” That recommendation remains open until the panel’s final annual report in January.
