The elegance and awkwardness of NASA’s Prada-Axiom Moon Suit

TWhen NASA first unveiled a new spacesuit, President John Kennedy was present. It was 1961, and Kennedy had traveled to Cape Canaveral on an inspection tour, where a suit technician with the absolutely perfect name of Joe Kosmo was tasked with modeling the pressurized garment that the original seven astronauts would wear during their flights aboard their tiny Mercury capsules would . Kosmo appeared before Kennedy as promised, demonstrating the ease with which he could bend and flex in the inflatable suit. He then told the president that the gloves were so tamperable that he could pick up a coin – if only he had one.

Kennedy reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and placed it on the floor. Kosmo bent down, picked it up, and offered it back to Kennedy.

“Keep it,” the president said. “A souvenir.” Half a century later, Kosmo still had the coin.

NASA’s newest spaceflight equipment, unveiled this week, didn’t receive the same attention. No heads of state were present at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, when Houston-based aerospace company Axiom Space and Italian fashion giant Prada Group unveiled their new spacesuit. The suit is far more elaborate than the long-ago Mercury model and far more expensive, the product of a $228 million contract NASA awarded Axiom in 2022. But there is a good reason for the increase in price and complexity: as early as the end of 2026, the spacesuits will be worn by the crew of Artemis III at the moon’s south pole, when they leave the first boot prints on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 .

“We are ushering in a new era of space exploration where partnerships are essential to the commercialization of space,” Russell Ralston, executive vice president of Extravehicular Activity (EVA, or lunar spacewalks) at Axiom, said in a statement. “For the first time, we are leveraging expertise from other industries to develop a better solution for space.”

The partnership between Axiom and Prada began two years ago, shortly after Axiom won its NASA contract. The company hired Esther Marquis, the costume designer for Apple TV’s space series “For All Mankind,” to create the look of the suit, but as soon as she was on board, Prada reached out with an offer to help, too. Ralston liked the idea, he told The New York Just that partnering with a luxury fashion brand “actually makes a lot of sense because a spacesuit is something unique.” He hired Prada to select and source the materials for the suit and collaborate with Marquis on the overall aesthetic. Meanwhile, Axiom engineers have developed the insulation, articulations, life support systems and more that make an extravagant spacesuit a kind of form-fitting spacecraft.

The suit that resulted from this collaboration, like the Apollo moon suits of a half-century ago, is equal parts unconventional and elegant. On Earth, the Apollo models and their accompanying backpacks weighed 180 pounds, which would have made them nearly impossible to jump across the lunar surface had the moon’s one-sixth gravity not reduced the load to just 30 pounds . Today’s suits from the Artemis era are even heavier. Axiom won’t reveal their exact weight because it’s confidential information, but Ralston says they weigh a few hundred pounds.

The extra weight is due in part to the region of the moon that Artemis astronauts will explore. Unlike the six Apollo landing teams, which explored plains, highlands and mountains in a more or less equatorial band, the Artemis astronauts will land at the moon’s south pole, where ice – which can be harvested for water, breathable oxygen and hydrogen – Oxygen Rocket Fuel – Found in permanently shadowed craters. Temperatures at the Apollo landing sites ranged from 250°F (121°C) in bright sunlight to -208°F (-133°C) in the shade. In the permanently shaded regions of the South Pole, the thermometer bottoms out at a much lower -373°F (-225°C). That requires more robust insulation, which increases weight but also extends the time for astronauts’ excursions. The new suit, Ralston said in an email to TIME, “can perform eight-hour spacewalks, a two-hour increase over Apollo-era EVAs.”

This longer surface time is thanks to the suits’ three-layer design. The innermost layer consists of a full-body underpants laced with tubes that carry cool water from the neck to the toes to prevent the astronauts from overheating in the harsh sunlight. The cooling garment is surrounded by an airtight pressure layer – the part of the suit that does the real heavy lifting to keep the astronauts alive in the airless environment of the moon. This is surrounded by the Environmental Protective Garment (EPG), the suit’s heavy, visible outer shell that protects astronauts from cuts and punctures in a lunar terrain full of rugged rocks and slopes. Last year, Axiom revealed an early version of this outer layer, decorated in dark colors to hide other proprietary elements. The model introduced this week is finished in proper white, which reflects excessive sunlight to prevent the crew from overheating and also makes it easier to detect and sweep away fine lunar dust, which is known to stain zippers and joints after the evening a single moonwalk.

The quarter-billion-dollar research and development costs will decrease as the Artemis program comes into play in future landings and more astronauts wear the new suits. Unlike the Apollo-era suits, where each one was individually tailored to the specific astronaut who would wear it, the Axiom Prada suits are modular, with snap-in and snap-out limbs and torso designed for women and men are suitable from the 1st percentile of height to the 99th percentile. Ralston touts this “plug-and-play customizability” as an effective way to keep costs low and manufacturing efficiency high.

For viewers at home, it will be the suit’s outer layer that will make the biggest impression, not its interior. Prada’s triangular branding will not be visible on the suit, as Axiom took the lead on development, but the latter company’s “AX” logo, stitched in gray to the suit’s torso, will be visible, as well like the full name on the backpack. As with the Apollo suits, the suit worn by the commander will feature red piping to distinguish each crew member from each other as their faces are obscured by the reflective helmet visors. There are gray patches on the knees and elbows of the spacesuits, which add visual accents and protect against cuts and punctures during the inevitable falls that astronauts suffer while bunny hopping across the lunar surface.

“While the knee and elbow pads are designed to allow flexibility and reduce impact to the suit and astronaut, the color gray is an aesthetic design choice,” says Ralston. “These pads provide additional insulation and robustness against moon dust.”

It is very questionable whether NASA can actually meet its target date for the manned landing of Artemis III in September 2026. The Artemis II mission, a comparatively simple circumlunar journey around the far side of the Moon and straight back home, has already been postponed from its original launch date of September 2024 to November 2025 due to budget constraints and heat shield design challenges. Artemis III, which requires a separate lunar lander that hasn’t even gotten out of the preliminary design phase, let alone been built, flown and tested, is unlikely to be launched in two years.

The bet here is that American boots will indeed return to the moon, but not before the end of this decade. But when this mission actually flies, the question of what the crews will wear will at least be carefully, artfully and gracefully resolved.