Collins Aerospace once again backs out of NASA spacesuit commitment

WASHINGTON — As NASA grapples with spare spacesuit problems aboard the World Long Station, the company that decided to build the alternative suit says it is backing out of that effort.

In a comment to SpaceNews on June 25, a spokesperson for Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX Corp., said the company and NASA have decided to “descope” work on spacesuit manufacturing for the ISS under the task order, a commitment that Is part of. Awarded two years ago. Reuters was the first to report that the company was planning to back out of the commitment.

“After a thorough evaluation, Collins Aerospace and NASA mutually agreed to cancel the Exploration Extravehicular Activities Services (xEVAS) task orders. Collins is committed to supporting NASA and human spaceflight programs,” the company said.

NASA announced in June 2022 that it had decided on Collins and Axiom Length for the xEVAS program, which seeks to commercially assemble spacesuits that can be presented to NASA as a carrier. So NASA provided Collins with a role layout to work on a suit for service on the ISS, after which Axiom received a role layout to assemble spacesuits for Artemis lunar missions.

Collins publicly reported an excellent settlement on that suit. In February, the company said it tested a prototype of the suit on parabolic aircraft flights, generating an instant 20 seconds of microgravity. “My honest opinion is that it’s a far more capable suit,” former NASA astronaut Danny Olivas, who soon became the key test astronaut at Collins, said at the time.

The corporate did not explain why it wanted to feature the pictures in the challenge. Trade Assets noted that they believed Collins had faced delays and price increases and concluded that it was not feasible for the corporate to continue work on it, especially given the commitment’s fixed-price Looking at nature.

NASA has not commented on Collins’ decision to complete work on the suit and what steps, if any, it will take to find a new suit developer. But despite Axiom and Collins, SpaceX is independently creating its own personal spacesuit that can be tested in the Polaris Dawn private astronaut project aviation on Group Dragon. This challenge is scheduled to take place in mid-July.

NASA issued “crossover” activity orders to both Axiom and Collins in July, allowing Axiom to begin analyzing how it would integrate its lunar spacesuits to the ISS and Collins to develop its ISS spacesuits for its lunar missions. How can you customize? Axiom is focused on the Artemis suit, including an updated integrated test with NASA and SpaceX to explore how the suit will integrate with various parts of the Starship lunar lander and Artemis 3 project.

The announcement from Collins comes after NASA conducted two consecutive scrubbed spacewalks from the ISS. NASA canceled the June 13 spacewalk, citing astronaut Matt Dominick reporting a “suit discomfort” factor before the spacewalk began. NASA did not elaborate on the specific flaw with the suit.

NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson and Mike Barrett were scheduled to complete another spacewalk on June 24, completing duties scheduled for an earlier suspension spacewalk. Alternatively, as the external hatch of the airlock opened, Dyson reported a H2O spray as he cut a carrier and cooled umbilical shape for his suit, as was intentional.

“There’s water literally everywhere,” Dyson said as the H2O turned to ice, forming a layer on the visor of his helmet. Reattaching the form prevented the spray, although NASA aborted the spacewalk as a safety measure. The company said on June 25 that the astronauts inspected the suits and tested procedures for the life spacewalk, but did not confirm whether the planned spacewalk on July 2 would take place as scheduled at the playground.

These days, spacesuits, called extravehicular mobility gadgets, or EMUs, are worn on the station for long periods of time and begin to develop problems as the months go by. In 2022, NASA discontinued use of the suit for regular spacewalks for several months after an astronaut reported seeing a thin layer of H2O inside his visor at the end of a spacewalk. NASA concluded that H2O went into mode due to “integrated system performance” rather than a specific hardware fault.

NASA safety advisers have warned about the dangers posed by increasingly old EMUs. “It is an undeniable fact that the 40-year-old EMUs used in ISS operations are reaching the end of their useful lives,” NASA’s Aerospace Protection Advisory Panel said in a 2019 advisory. “Before the risk of EVA (extravehicular activity) becomes unbearable.” That advice didn’t remain hidden as long as the panel’s original annual document in January.

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