NASA Glenn’s core competencies in space flight power, communications, and software is instrumental for the development of two future space suits:  a Launch, Entry, and Abort (LEA) suit used for future government and commercial spacecraft, and an exploration suit for use as an International Space Station (ISS) demonstrator, Near Earth Asteroid Missions, and future Planetary Missions. These efforts support the Orion Project and Exploration Technology Development and Demonstrations Program (ETDD) EVA Project, respectively. Johnson Space Center leads the Suit development;  Glenn Research Center leads the Power, Avionics, and Software with support from industry and academia.

The future LEA suit will be designed for greater pressurized mobility with minimum factors of safety, longer-term unpressurized cabin survival, minimally invasive and structurally integrated biomedial sensors, and a streamlined audio communications carrier assembly with an emphasis on comfort.  This future suit will align with commercial space ventures to identify common interfaces and an integrated design with commercial vehicles that will transport crew to the ISS. Glenn Research Center is leading the development of the Audio (Communications Carrier Assembly) and BioMed Sensors.

The future Exploration Suit explores technologies and systems that enable future EVA capabilities for human exploration missions, including EVAs at the ISS, missions to Near Earth Asteroids, and future surface missions.  Providing an EVA capability for these types of missions enables in-space construction of complex vehicles or satellites, hands on exploration of new parts of our solar system, and engages the public through the inspiration of knowing that humans are exploring places that they have never been before.

The EVA ETDD Project develops technologies to reduce system mass, consumables, and maintenance, while increasing EVA hardware robustness, operational life, crew member efficiency and autonomy, and enabling rapid vehicle egress and ingress.

The EVA ETDD Power, Avionics, and Software team is developing assemblies to provide power for the suit; integrated suit audio with advanced audio electronics; an enhanced caution & warning system; a miniaturized radio capable of transferring EVA data flows under various operational scenarios; a user-friendly and minimally invasive crewmember display device; and information systems that assists crew members to perform their tasks with more autonomy and efficiency. Near-term technology assessment efforts are focused on evaluating state-of-the-art hardware and software with the potential to meet future EVA requirements.