Humans are expected to set foot on the Moon again in about four years. As part of the NASA program to return a man to the moon during the Artemis mission, two astronauts, a man and a woman, will land on the lunar surface. To do this, NASA is developing a completely new spacesuit for the first time in more than 40 years. Developers the other day to the first tests of the space suit in the pool under hydroweightlessness.
The design of the spacesuits is being tested at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory of the NASA Space Center. Johnson. Also, in the conditions of a pool with mock-ups of space stations and elements of their structures, astronauts are given the opportunity to get used to a difficult shell in order to feel βat homeβ in orbit or on the Moon.
To simulate the surface of the moon, sand or fine gravel was even poured into the pool, so that astronauts (and designers, which is important) could jump and walk as if on the moon. Interestingly, the package of exercises for testing lunar spacesuits for ease of use even included ritual manipulations with the installation of the American flag on the βlunarβ surface (and then these shots will be used by everyone who does not want to believe in the astronauts going to the moon).
Officially, the new NASA spacesuit for going to the moon (pictured below on the left) and the suit for flying to the Moon in a manned module (pictured on the right) were presented . In total, the agency plans to produce five fully functional lunar spacesuits. The first of these will be completed in December and will be comprehensively tested for the reliability of the design. The second is designed to pass a full range of qualification tests, which is necessary for product certification. In the third, the astronauts will perform a spacewalk from the ISS in near-Earth orbit. The fourth and fifth are those in which the exit to the lunar surface will be made in 2024.
By the way, NASA called the lunar suit the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). In addition to reaching the lunar surface, the xEMU suit is also planned to be used to reach the surface of Mars, when it comes down to it.
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Source: 3dnews.ru