An artist’s concept of a spacewalk created by the Polaris Dawn crew. Credit: Instagram/Polaris.
Humankind has long dreamed of setting foot on other planets like the Moon or Mars. Since the 1960s, space travelers have stepped into the unknown wearing suits designed to protect them from the vacuum of space.
But the Polaris Dawn mission, which includes the first spacewalk organized by a private company, has been delayed. This is due to the complexity of designing and developing a suitable space suit.
The lunar suit is also one of the key elements of NASA’s as-yet-unrealized Artemis moon program. The report, released in November 2023, said contractors building the suits would have to reconsider some of the designs provided by NASA, which could cause delays.
However, the first spacewalk by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov took place in 1965. Then, from 1969 to 1972, 12 NASA astronauts walked on the moon using technology that eclipses today’s smartphones. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to ask why it is still difficult to design and manufacture spacesuits to do the same thing.
A lot has changed since the Apollo program planted its flag on the moon. The geopolitics driving space travel are changing, and spacesuits are no longer expected solely as a means of protection. Rather, it is an important way to improve astronaut productivity. This requires rethinking not only the suit itself, but also the technology that underpins it.
A suite of powerful communications technologies that connect astronauts to the space station and ground control are installed alongside multisensory cameras, temperature readers, and proximity sensors in current spacesuits.
Situational awareness, or understanding important factors in the environment, such as an astronaut’s health status, is a core principle of modern spacesuit design and critical to operator safety. The suit’s ability to track heart rate and other vital signs is important in vacuums, where oxygen levels must be continuously monitored.
Expectations regarding the risks astronauts take have changed for the better. And given the level of investment required to manufacture spacesuits, it will be necessary to be able to use them for future missions, which could include colonizing the moon within the next few decades.
When incorporating wearable technologies such as those already mentioned, a trade-off that engineers must consider is weight. Will increasing situational awareness make spacesuits too heavy to move effectively?
When Elon Musk first hinted at challenges for Polaris Dawn’s EVA suit In a presentation to SpaceX employees in Januaryhe discussed not the issue of connected technology, but redesigning “the suit so that you can actually move around in it.”
situational awareness
However, when talking about spacesuit mobility, you need to consider the tasks you want that mobility to support.
Before modern spacesuits, Apollo astronauts struggled to complete their missions. When astronauts used hand drills to drill holes into the moon’s surface to collect samples, they found it difficult to apply enough downward force to counteract the moon’s weak gravity. This problem was only solved decades later with the invention of the zero-gravity drill.
Current exploration of pneumatic exoskeletons that provide the necessary support for locomotion in low gravity could be part of the solution. However, new spacesuits may also require interfacing with hardware such as robotic drills on the outside of the spacesuit. This also requires greater maneuverability of the spacesuit.
Work with robots
Part of the future of space exploration will be having robots perform tasks traditionally performed by humans. It’s also a major way for engineers to increase the maneuverability of astronauts in spacesuits.
For example, when astronauts perform a spacewalk to inspect the condition of a part of the space station and make possible repairs, they are supported by a robotic arm to keep them from floating into space. While articulated, this arm is stiff and can limit the astronaut’s movement.
An approach currently being considered to extend this range of movement is a climbing robot that can be attached to both the astronaut and the space station and controlled by the individual through their spacesuit. This will allow astronauts to move faster and more widely within the space station than before, allowing them to reach hard-to-reach spots such as corners to make repairs.
It is hoped that eventually the robots themselves will be able to assess and repair damage to the space station, but humans must be ready to intervene as normal operations may be disrupted. yeah. Possible disruptions can be natural, such as a small meteor shower damaging the robot. , or man-made, such as a hack carried out by a hostile group or nation-state.
what do you need
This human-robot collaboration will be useful for the kinds of activities we want to accomplish in the future. The U.S. and China’s plans to build a lunar base will involve construction work and excavation that humans cannot accomplish alone. Modern spacesuits must provide an interface to work with this new technology, and spacesuits are expected to evolve in tandem with robotics.
The relationship between humans and robots is changing. It will move beyond spacewalks and robots’ previous limited use as tools to situations where robots become collaborative partners in space. Goals in the next 10 and 20 years, such as building lunar habitats, exploring lunar mineral deposits, and efficiently repairing space station modules, can only be achieved using robotics.
Modern spacesuits will be a key foundation for this collaboration, forming an interface where astronauts and robots can work together to achieve common goals. Therefore, when we leave our mark on the rest of the world again, we will no longer be alone.
The author is Professor of Robotics and heads the Center for Robotics Research within the Faculty of Engineering at King’s College London.
This article first appeared on The Conversation. Republished here under a Creative Commons license.
