NASA Unveils 2 New Spacesuits for Moon Mission

NASA unveiled two new spacesuits, Tuesday, October 15, designed for the space agency’s Artemis moon mission, which is scheduled to return Americans to the moon by 2024.

One of the suits, called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, will be worn by astronauts while exploring the surface of the moon’s south pole.

The second, called the Orion Crew Survival System, will be worn during the launch to the moon and then re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

In March, Vice President Mike Pence ordered NASA to land humans on the moon by 2024, accelerating a goal to colonize the moon as a staging ground for an eventual mission to Mars.

The mission also is part of a search for ice on the moon. A NASA rocket that crashed into the moon’s south pole a decade ago revealed vast reserves of ice beneath the surface.

To find out prior to the Artemis moon mission whether the ice is in large chunks or combined with the soil, NASA is working to put rovers on the moon by 2022.