NASA's Secret: Moon astronauts will be rocking Prada underwear

The devil may wear Prada, but soon Moon-bound astronauts will be sporting unmentionables from the high-fashion brand. Okay, to be honest, Prada hasn't actually designed haute-couture Italian astronaut underthings for casual rocket missions so much as its existing collaboration with Axiom Space has been expanded to include a base layer for the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), which the pair announced in 2024. One can't be caught in an unfashionable Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) inside a fashion house EVA suit, after all. Axiom Space rolled out the LCVG in New York City over the weekend, describing it as the companion piece that future NASA Moon explorers will be issued when humans return to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis IV mission in 2028, provided that the timeline doesn't change again. According to Axiom Space and Prada's announcement, the new LCVG will be much like old designs, inasmuch as the ensemble is outfitted with a bunch of tubes circulating chilled water across an astronaut's body and moving hotter stuff toward the suit's life-support system, where heat is expelled. The ventilation portion of the acronym involves a series of oxygen tubes delivering fresh oxygen across an astronaut's face to continuously wash away exhaled carbon dioxide," which is then removed by carbon dioxide scrubbers in the suit's life support system. The Prada/Axiom Space LCVG differs from older models in its redundancy, the companies said. The suit includes a fully redundant cooling circuit" to ensure no one has to come back to the ship sweatier and nastier than they have to be. Because NASA is envisioning extended spacewalks on the Moon, Axiom and Prada designed the AxEMU to support eight-hour spacewalks on the Lunar South Pole, which the new LCVG is also designed to support. While the companies didn't give specifics about the materials or other elements of the LCVG, the announcement did mention Prada's expertise in engineered knitting and innovative design concepts," along with advanced 3D modeling, contributed to a high-performance" suit that includes specialized fibers that allow the garment to be worn repeatedly across long-duration missions." Axiom Space declined to go into specifics on the material makeup of the LCVG, but the company's SVP of spacecraft development, Russell Ralston, did tell The Register that the materials are microbial-resistant and antifungal to prevent odor and degradation between wears." In other words, Artemis astronaut underthings should stay scent-free while on the Moon, hopefully. Astro-BO doesn't matter if you can't make it to the Moon No one wants to be stuck in a tiny capsule with several people unable to clean themselves with much more than wet wipes and dry shampoo, but presumably stink-suppressing Prada space suit unders don't really matter if future Artemis missions have trouble getting to space. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket recently exploded, leading to extensive damage at its Cape Canaveral launch complex and what could be more than a year of reconstruction to get the platform ready for its next launch. SpaceX's Starship, one of NASA's options for getting astronauts back to the Moon, hasn't done much better of late, and is running short on time to prove it can meet the agency's lunar mission needs. And then there's Axiom and Prada's part in the whole show, which NASA's watchdog has raised concerns about as well. NASA's Inspector General said in an April report that while Axiom currently plans to have demonstration suits ready in 2027, historical testing timelines suggest the agency might not see flight-ready demonstrations until 2031. Ralston told us that a lot has changed since that report, including NASA establishing incremental steps for increased cadence and reduced risk in developing various parts of the Artemis program. Axiom Space, Ralston added, has been moving quickly to reduce its lead time for the suits, too. We have begun assembling the qualification suit and are preparing to begin qualification testing," Ralston said. We will complete the Critical Design Review this year." Axiom Space has performed more than 1,000 hours of crewed pressure testing, Ralson noted, including an initial thermal vacuum test. The AxEMU spacesuit will be ready to enable humanity to return to the lunar surface," Ralston proclaimed. As it currently stands, Artemis IV is the mission NASA intends to land at the Moon's south pole, and it plans to do so in 2028. That timeline has already slipped once, and given recent setbacks, could very well slip again, likely giving Axiom and Prada a bit more time to get their interplanetary fashion house in order. (R)