Key Takeaways
- Prada teams up with Axiom Space to create the AxEMU spacesuit for Artemis III.
- The Artemis III mission aims for a December 2025 lunar landing, including the first woman and person of color on the Moon.
- The new suit offers increased flexibility, protection, and specialized tools compared to NASA’s previous xEMU design.
Washington: Italian luxury fashion house Prada announced Wednesday that it concluded the first “groundbreaking partnership” with US company Axiom Space to design NASA’s spacesuits for the Artemis III to the Moon.
“In the first groundbreaking partnership between an Italian luxury fashion house and a commercial space company, Prada presents a collaboration with Axiom Space, industry leader and architect of the world’s first commercial space station, on NASA’s lunar spacesuits for the Artemis III mission. As the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972, this Artemis mission, planned for 2025, will also be the first to place a woman on the Moon,” Prada said in a statement on the website.
Prada said that the new Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit will provide astronauts with “advanced capabilities for space exploration, while offering NASA commercially developed human systems needed to access, live and work on and around the Moon,” adding that these new spacesuits will “enable greater exploration of the lunar surface than ever before.”
Prada also said that the AxEMU spacesuit, which evolved from NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit, is made to provide “increased flexibility, greater protection to withstand the harsh environment, and specialized tools for exploration and scientific opportunities.”
The Artemis III mission is scheduled for December 2025 to return US astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 53 years, including the first female US astronaut and first US astronaut of color to walk on the lunar surface, NASA officials have previously said.
