* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Receives Expected Nasdaq Notice Regarding Delayed Quarterly Report – Business Wire

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Faces Nasdaq Notice Over Delayed Quarterly Report

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    i3D Robotics Unveils Breakthrough Glass Defect Detection Technology – USGlass Magazine

    Revolutionary Glass Defect Detection Technology Unveiled by i3D Robotics!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Receives Expected Nasdaq Notice Regarding Delayed Quarterly Report – Business Wire

    Allied Gaming & Entertainment Faces Nasdaq Notice Over Delayed Quarterly Report

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    i3D Robotics Unveils Breakthrough Glass Defect Detection Technology – USGlass Magazine

    Revolutionary Glass Defect Detection Technology Unveiled by i3D Robotics!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

NASA Astronaut Spacesuits are Essentially Miniature Spacecrafts

July 30, 2024
in Science
NASA Astronaut Spacesuits are Essentially Miniature Spacecrafts
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

When Neil Armstrong took his first step upon the cratered, dusty surface of the moon, the only thing protecting him from battering rays of direct sunlight, space radiation, and shooting lunar particles was the meticulously designed spacesuit he’d donned.

But before Armstrong stepped on the moon, the suit kept making rapid trips back and forth between Delaware and Houston. Experts took it down to Texas in a suitcase for testing before sending it back upstate for fixes – including swapping out a zipper, just two weeks before launch.

Designing the spacesuits that would eventually take humans into the hostile world outside of Earth’s atmosphere was far from easy. The famous suits that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wore to the moon alone underwent multiple transfers of contractor ownership and testing failures before they were finally approved for use.

“It’s very exciting to incorporate new ideas, but designing a spacesuit really is an iterative process. You don’t want to take new, bold, great risks at the expense of human life,” says Cathleen Lewis, curator of International Space Programs and Spacesuits at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

Designing Spacesuits

Any spacesuit is essentially a miniature spacecraft, designed first and foremost to provide its wearer connections to communications, life support, and bodily protection.

Lunar spacesuits were decidedly unique from even EVA (extravehicular activity) suits. Of course, they needed to shield astronauts from wildly extreme temperatures. But they also needed strong boots that wouldn’t give way to the sharp lunar surface. They needed joint flexibility so astronauts could walk around and take scientific samples of this new world, and they needed portable life support backpacks. They even needed to shield the astronauts from tiny meteorite particles that shot at them 10 times faster than a bullet.

The First Spacesuits

The first people to enter space in the early 1960s, including Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American astronaut Alan Shepard, weren’t actually wearing the bulky-looking suits of Apollo 11. Rather, their suits, according to Lewis, acted more like pressure suits, designed for emergency use only.

The first true spacesuits came a few years later, as ambitions rose to not just launch into space, but walk in it. These were the suits of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and astronaut Edward White, colored blaring white to reflect off the incoming blast of solar radiation and sunlight.

“Both sides had tested these suits under the best simulated conditions that they could come up with here on Earth,” Lewis says. “But things change out in space.”

Making the Apollo Spacesuit

From this, NASA switched to a water-based system: essentially, long underwear stuffed with beverage tubing, forming a spaghetti-like system that delivered a constant temperature and flow of water throughout it.

The Apollo spacesuit consisted of over 20 different layers and 12 materials – including joints made of the same rubbery materials used in women’s underwear.

Most of the materials that went into the Apollo 11 suits were products that had already been invented and used long before space exploration began. That included materials like Teflon (which is commonly used in household products like nonstick pans), invented in 1938.

“Spacesuit engineers tend to be very conservative,” Lewis says. “This is an issue of preserving life, and they test their materials methodically.”

Read More: How an Astronaut Sleeps in Space

Fabric and Materials of Spacesuits

Engineers also needed the assurance that the materials they used worked well together. Earlier spacesuits combining brass zippers with rubber gaskets, for instance, unintentionally fueled their own degradation.

And while bullet-proof Kevlar is effective in protecting an astronaut against space particles zipping by, Lewis says it wasn’t enough to prevent astronauts’ gloves from slicing open on the sharp handholds of the International Space Station (ISS).

The tragic test mission of Apollo 1 alerted NASA to the fact that the suit fabric it was using at the time had a far too low melting point.

“They stick to what they know, and they stick to what works,” Lewis says. “They make iterative changes using new combinations of materials.”

Read More: New Technology Could Replace Space Suit Diapers for Astronauts

Testing NASA Spacesuits

Whenever new materials come in for manufacturing, engineers put them to the test, ranging from microscopic and X-ray inspections to shooting pellets at the fabrics. After making the actual spacesuit, manufacturers like ILC even hire human testers, whose jobs are to, “basically, give it a workout that it would get over its lifetime,” Lewis says. That includes flexes, lunges, and squats – the whole gamut.

“It’s consistency and constant vigilance,” Lewis says. “It’s not as dramatic as somebody jumping into a spacesuit and just jumping out into space.”

Read More: How NASA And SpaceX Get Spacecraft Safely Back On Earth

Making NASA Spacesuits Today

Now, as NASA prepares to send astronauts to the moon for the first time in over 50 years, it’s continuing to refine its suits using the lessons from our Space Age. It’s focusing on crafting suits that can adapt to fit and function on everyone, regardless of their sizes.

“This isn’t that they’re all alike, but the essential operations of the suit are the same across the board,” Lewis explains.

Another major challenge NASA is facing is mounting expenses. Those will continue to remain thorny as it navigates the market alongside new contractors, including Axiom and SpaceX.

But to Lewis, even simple challenges remain, down to the gloves astronauts wear. While NASA has solved the knifing issue, it has yet to create a glove that perfectly protects and insulates astronauts’ hands, while allowing them to move around freely. It’s a problem engineers have been trying to crack for generations.

“We haven’t figured out a way to replicate [into a spacesuit glove] what is so essential to us being human beings, and it is our ability to use our hands,” Lewis says. “Whether we’ll be able to do it, I don’t know. The magic of obtaining a material may still come.”

Read More: How NASA Is Prepping Mars Astronauts to Cope With Isolation and Other Extremes

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

Curator of International Space Programs and Spacesuits at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Cathleen Lewis 

Humans in Space. History of Spacesuits

National Air and Space Museum. Spacesuits

National Air and Space Museum. Conservation

APS.org. This Month in Physics History

NASA. Apollo 1

Axiom Space. Axiom Space Awarded Contract to Pursue Spacesuit Development for International Space Station

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Discover Magazine – https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/nasa-astronaut-spacesuits-are-essentially-miniature-spacecrafts

Tags: astronautscienceSpacesuits
Previous Post

What the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 Means For UFO Sightings

Next Post

President Biden’s new proposal calls for term limits and an ethics code for Supreme Court justices

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

June 1, 2025
This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

June 1, 2025
Trump’s new ‘gold standard’ rule will destroy American science as we know it | Colette Delawalla – The Guardian

Trump’s Controversial ‘Gold Standard’ Rule: A Threat to the Future of American Science

June 1, 2025
The month of pride – financialexpress.com

Celebrating Pride: A Month of Love, Acceptance, and Empowerment

June 1, 2025
Elon Musk: Five ways world’s richest man changed the White House – BBC

Elon Musk’s Impact: Five Transformative Ways the World’s Richest Man Influenced the White House

June 1, 2025
Last Week at Economy Class and Beyond (31st May) – Economy Class & Beyond –

Last Week at Economy Class and Beyond (31st May) – Economy Class & Beyond –

June 1, 2025
Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

June 1, 2025
Governor Newsom proclaims Mental Health Awareness Month – Governor of California (.gov)

Governor Newsom Declares May as Mental Health Awareness Month!

June 1, 2025
Sanders says Harris fell short with working class. He has a plan to fix that. – The Washington Post

Sanders says Harris fell short with working class. He has a plan to fix that. – The Washington Post

June 1, 2025
Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

June 1, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (655)
  • Economy (670)
  • Entertainment (21,576)
  • General (15,254)
  • Health (9,712)
  • Lifestyle (672)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (671)
  • Politics (678)
  • Science (15,891)
  • Sports (21,174)
  • Technology (15,657)
  • World (658)

Recent News

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

Upgrades coming to ecological park in Sunbury – WNEP

June 1, 2025
This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

This will ‘devastate scientific research’: 16 states sue the Trump administration over National Science Foundation directive – CNN

June 1, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version