Collins Aerospace, a private company hired to create spacesuits for use outside the International Space Station (ISS). She tested her suit On board a commercial micro-gravity flight, marking a milestone that allows engineers to move toward a critical design review.
NASA outsourced the design of new spacesuits in 2022 after spending 15 years trying to develop new ones itself. Collins Aerospace said The suit is lighter and has less bulk than the “enhanced” extravehicular mobility modules used by current NASA astronauts. They can be modified as missions change and fit a much wider range of body types much more easily than older suits based on decades-old designs.
During testing, the plane performed “roller coaster-like maneuvers” to induce weightlessness and let someone wearing a prototype see if it actually allows someone to move in it under those conditions. As shown in the video below, they tried things like navigating through doors in zero gravity.
Collins Aerospace's next test will put the suit in a vacuum chamber to see how it performs in the vacuum of space, while testing under 40 feet of water at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Texas will simulate microgravity for spacewalk training.
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