WASHINGTON — NASA awarded task orders to 2 firms already working on spacesuits for the International Space Station and Artemis missions to develop alternative versions of their suits.
NASA announced July 10 that it issued task orders valued at $5 million each to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to start design work on alternative versions of their suits already in development. Axiom’s task order begins work on a version of its suit for the ISS while Collins will begin design of a suit intended for moonwalks.
NASA awarded contracts to the 2 firms in June 2022 through its Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services program to support development of recent Artemis and ISS spacesuits. NASA would then acquire spacesuit services moderately than the suits themselves, effectively renting them versus owning them.
The contracts, though, required the businesses to compete for specific task orders for spacesuit development. NASA awarded one task order to Axiom Space in September 2022 to develop an Artemis spacesuit, valued at $228.5 million. It awarded one other to Collins Aerospace in December 2022 for an ISS spacesuit, valued at $97.2 million.
The businesses will use the brand new “crossover” task orders to adapt the suits they’re developing for one application to the opposite. NASA said in an announcement that, after completing initial design work, the agency will then consider exercising options for further suit development.
Doing so, the agency said, provides redundancy by having a backup suit for each the ISS and Artemis missions. “Using this competitive approach we are going to enhance redundancy, expand future capabilities, and further spend money on the space economy,” said Lara Kearney, manager of the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program on the Johnson Space Center.
The awards may additionally more closely align with the businesses’ plans. Axiom, which won the unique task order for lunar spacesuits, can be developing a industrial space station that will require spacewalks either for maintenance or to serve customer requirements. Collins, which won the ISS suit task order last December, had earlier emphasized its work on lunar spacesuit designs.
“We’re excited so as to add our orbital spacesuits as an option for NASA,” Mark Greeley, EVA program manager at Axiom Space, said in an organization statement. The corporate said work on a low Earth orbit version of its spacesuit is already underway.
“Our next-generation spacesuit design is almost 90% compatible with a lunar mission,” said Dave Romero, director of EVA and human space mobility systems at Collins, in an organization statement. “This formal contract award will support continued efforts to switch our next-generation spacesuit, making it suitable to tasks on the moon.”
Axiom said that the complete value of this recent task order, if all options are exercised, is $142 million over 4 years. Collins didn’t disclose the complete value of its task order.