You probably don't want to go into outer space knowing that your spacesuit is like 40 years old and held together with the cosmonautic equipment of tape and baling wire.
But that's kind of what NASA has been doing for decades — until now, anyway:
NASA has been using the current spacesuits on the International Space Station for decades and they are showing their age.
"The spacesuits that are being used now in the International Space Station by NASA are suits that were really designed in the '70s. These are suits that were originally designed for the space shuttle program. Due to the lack of funding, NASA kept working on them, kept repairing them and maintaining them for all these many years. But really, these are suits that are at the end of their useful life," says Pablo De León, director of the Human Spaceflight Laboratory at the University of North Dakota.
Two key problems with the older suits:
NASA has had issues not only with finding the proper sizes to fit its increasingly diverse astronaut corps, but also with degradation of some suit components.
When they say "increasingly diverse astronaut corps," they mean there's more women going into space. The original suits were designed mostly for men. Men tend to be bigger than women. It's just the way it is.
How exactly the new suits will differ from the old ones at a technological level is fairly complex.
As one NASA scientist pointed out, one of the great advantages of a re-design is that the agency can draw on a much larger stock of up-to-date parts as opposed to the older equipment that was present when the older suits were designed and is now harder to find. Improvements to the viewing range of the helmet are also on the dock.
The new suits are much more mobile and adjustable, use a helmet with better visibility and glare-blocking features, and they weigh a LOT less. The current suits weigh 275 pounds (!!) on Earth, but the newer ones are light enough for the average person to do this:
The new suits definitely look sharp!
Here's a behind-the-scenes look if you have some time:
