NASA Requires Development of Gloves and Footwear to Endure Lunar Cold Climates
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Getting down 'n' dirty on the Moon ain't gonna be a walk in the park for NASA's upcoming Artemis III mission, especially in the frosty, shadow-worshipping parts of the lunar south pole. So, the space agency's whip-smart rocket scientists are cracking open the cooler to check their astronauts' threads and make sure they can handle the cold like a boss.
To do that, NASA's team of tech-savvy engineers are all over a beast of a cryogenic chamber called CITADEL. It's big and bad, standing four feet tall and five feet wide, and it's chillier than a polar beer, capable of reaching temperatures as frosty as -370 Fahrenheit (-223 degrees Celsius)! They usually use liquid nitrogen to keep things frosty, but CITADEL ups the ante with compressed helium. It takes a few days for this beast to get all chilled out, and once it's open, the entire freezing process starts over again. But, get this – it's built with four load locks, so the scientists can slide in test materials without breaking the chill.
CITADEL ain't just a cold holder though. It's got a mean robotic arm, perfect for grabbing frozen samples, and cameras catching everything in visible and infrared light. For those actual Moon mission simulations, the team tosses in some abrasion testing and lunar regolith-like materials in the chamber, along with aluminum blocks mimicking tools the astronauts might grab.
Now, in the past, NASA used their actual astronauts for thermal testing, but that got old fast. They'd stick a chilled glove box in front of the astronauts and make 'em hold onto some freezing object until their hands got as cold as 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). NASA ain't got time for that now. They got a custom manikin hand and foot to do the job inside CITADEL. It's equipped with a fancy system of fluid loops and dozens of temp and heat flux sensors that collect data from inside the gloves and boots.
Artemis III's scheduled for a 2027 launch, taking our brave astronauts on a wild ride to areas of the Moon never explored before. But here's the twist – they won't be landing near the equator like those Apollo astronauts, oh no. Instead, they'll head straight for the lunar south pole, home to permanently shadowed regions holding potentially life-saving water ice. The bad news? This area is extra harsh due to extreme temperatures and parts of it stay perpetually dark. The astronauts are gonna spend up to two hours at a time in these freezing craters, where temperatures drop as low as -414 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 degrees Celsius)!
The astronauts might look slick in their new spacesuits, but they're not the Apollo suits of yore. In 2022, NASA hired Axiom Space to design the first moon-striding suits since the Apollo missions. They call it the AxEMU, and it's built on the fame of the Apollo suits, complemented by new tech for better astronaut mobility and defense against the lunar environment. To give these spacemen a fashionable edge, Axiom Space teamed up with designer icon Prada. They're not just looking for space style though – they want functionality, and they ain't settling for anything less!
But what about those gloves and boots that NASA's been testing in CITADEL? Well, the gloves tested so far ain't cutting it, proving they wouldn't hold up to the temperatures at the lunar south pole. The testing on the boots is still in progress, but so far, it's shown promise.
Shane McFarland, lead tech dude from NASA's Advanced Suit Team, said in a statement, "This experiment is uncovering the limits: How long can those gloves or boots survive in the lunar environment before they've seen their last cold day? We're trying to quantify the current hardware's limitations so we can provide that info to the Artemis suit manufacturer, and we're also prepping this badass testing capability to evaluate future hardware designs."
Here's to hoping that our astronauts can stay snug and cozy in the dark, icy heart of the Moon during the Arctic blast of Artemis III!
- NASA's engineers are using a cryogenic chamber called CITADEL, capable of reaching temperatures as low as -370 Fahrenheit (-223 degrees Celsius), to test astronauts' equipment for the upcoming Artemis III mission.
- The testing on gloves for the Artemis III mission has shown that the current designs may not withstand the extreme temperatures at the lunar south pole.
- The gloves and boots undergoing testing in CITADEL are equipped with temperature and heat flux sensors to collect data and evaluate their performance in the lunar environment.
- Shane McFarland, the lead technician from NASA's Advanced Suit Team, stated that the results from these tests aim to quantify the current hardware's limitations and prepare for the evaluation of future hardware designs for astronauts' equipment.
