As NASA prepares to land astronauts on the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, there’s still one very crucial component that’s missing: the spacesuits. The agency has been seeking a new spacesuit for its lunar astronauts for years, but an alarming report warns that the suits could end up delaying the Artemis timeline.
NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on Monday assessing the space agency’s procurement process for the next-generation spacesuits, suggesting that a commercial services route may not have been the best approach. NASA is now relying on a single provider, Axiom Space, to deliver the spacesuits astronauts will wear on the Moon during the Artemis 4 mission, currently planned for 2028. The report, however, determined that Axiom’s spacesuit won’t be ready until 2031.
“Although NASA is taking proactive steps to enable Axiom’s success, if Axiom cannot satisfy its contractual requirements in a timely or cost-effective manner, the Agency could be forced to significantly adjust its lunar and microgravity spacewalking plans,” the report reads.
Years in the making
NASA astronauts are in need of new spacesuits. The ones currently on board the International Space Station (ISS) are more than 40 years old and have put astronauts’ lives at risk on a few occasions.
Rather than developing its own spacesuits, NASA opted to hand out two Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services contracts worth up to $3.1 billion combined. The firm-fixed-price deals were given to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace in 2022. The companies were tasked with developing the spacesuits, whereas NASA would essentially rent them for its astronauts. Two years later, however, Collins dropped out, leaving Axiom as the only remaining supplier.
The OIG report noted that “while NASA’s firm-fixed-price, service-based contracts can be effective for certain procurements, they are not well-suited for developmental efforts like next-generation spacesuits,” and that the agency “made risky management decisions.”
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman responded to the OIG report, saying that NASA does need to be mindful of its contracting approach in areas where it is the only customer. “That places a significant capital burden on providers while they wait for additional demand to materialize,” Isaacman wrote on X. “A successful approach for commercial crew and cargo, underpinned by launch, does not mean it is applicable to every space-related service. The orbital and lunar economy is inevitable. We just need to be thoughtful in our approach to sustainably enable it.”
No suit, no Moon
So, where does this leave the spacesuits today? NASA had originally planned on demonstrating Axiom’s next-generation spacesuits in 2025 and 2026, but that was “overly optimistic and unrealistic,” the report reads.
Axiom Space recently announced that it would carry out the first in-flight test of its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit in 2027, either on board the ISS or during the upcoming Artemis 3 mission.
The OIG, however, estimates that the spacesuit demonstration would not occur until 2031 based on historical averages of development times for other recent spaceflight programs. “Even with efforts to accelerate the schedule, there is little to no schedule margin for the spacesuits to be ready for the Artemis lunar landing mission and a diminishing amount of margin before the ISS’s decommissioning,” the report stated.
In response to the report, Axiom Space pushed back on the estimated timeline. “Axiom Space is delivering the most advanced spacesuit ever built for human lunar exploration—and we’re doing it with the urgency the Artemis campaign demands,” the company wrote on X. “We remain confident in our path to a 2027 demonstration and to supporting America’s return to the lunar surface in 2028.”
The company noted that it has logged over 950 hours of crewed pressurized testing, completed the first thermal vacuum test of the pressure garment, and delivered over 1,300 products toward critical design review.
“I am confident that when NASA is ready to land on the Moon in 2028, our astronauts will be wearing Axiom suits,” Isaacman also reiterated on X.
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