ALBAWABA – Elon Musk’s SpaceX has revealed on X (formerly Twitter) a new Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suit, to be worn by the astronaut team of the Polaris Dawn commercial space mission, which will be carried out on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft this summer.
The new EVA suit, according to the spacecraft manufacturer, has been created with increased flexibility, safety, and performance in mind, and is intended to facilitate the first commercial astronaut spacewalk and serve as a critical milestone in SpaceX's quest to make humans multiplanetary.
The suit is an improvement on the SpaceX’s earlier Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit. designed to give astronauts more freedom of movement, and features a cutting-edge helmet with a Heads-Up Display (HUD), a camera, new thermal management textiles, and materials derived from Falcon's interstage and Dragon's trunk.
SpaceX says that it will take an extensive number of spacesuits to establish a settlement on Mars and a base on the Moon, claiming that the creation of this suit and the upcoming spacewalk mission will represent significant advances toward a design that can be used on many more long-duration trips in the future as life spreads to other planets.
“The goal of this suit is to be our first design of the EVA suit, and then, just like all other SpaceX products, we’re going to continue through block upgrades as we go forward and learn,” said Stu Keech, Vice President of Dragon at SpaceX.
