Italian luxury fashion house Prada has partnered with US private space company Axiom Space to create a spacesuit for the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis III lunar mission.
This designer spacesuit, known as ‘Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU)’, was unveiled during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which took place in Milan, Italy, between October 14-18, 2024.
In a press release Lorenzo Bertelli, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Prada Group said: “We’ve shared our expertise on high-performance materials, features, and sewing techniques, and we learned a lot. I’m sure we’ll continue to explore new challenges, broaden our horizons, and build new scenarios together.”
While Prada brings its aesthetic touch to the project, the AxEMU spacesuit is also a sophisticated piece of state-of-the-art technology, which has been under development for over two years and has already been subject to extensive testing.
This new spacesuit will allow astronauts to perform eight-hour-long space walks. It is capable of withstanding the extreme cold temperatures of the permanently shadowed areas of the Lunar South Pole for at least two hours. It also features an array of life-support systems, an advanced visor and gloves that represent an upgrade of the current generation technology.
Axiom Space is part of a group of aerospace companies, which includes Lockheed Martin, Airbus and SpaceX, working together in what is expected to be the first manned visit to the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
For the time being, the spacesuit is to be exhibited to the public at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, in the very center of Milan.