[Editors] MIT designs sleek, skintight spacesuit

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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One giant leap for space fashion:
MIT team designs sleek, skintight spacesuit

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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu

PHOTOS AVAILABLE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--In the 40 years that humans have been traveling 
into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, 
gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but 
their significant mass and the  pressure itself severely limit 
mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and 
engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow 
superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the 
moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's 
spacesuit-think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.

Traditional bulky spacesuits "do not afford the mobility and 
locomotion capability that astronauts need for partial gravity 
exploration missions. We really must design for greater mobility and 
enhanced human and robotic capability," Newman says.

Newman, her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students and a local design 
firm, Trotti and Associates, have been working on the project for 
about seven years. Their prototypes are not yet ready for space 
travel, but demonstrate what they're trying to achieve-a lightweight, 
skintight suit that will allow astronauts to become truly mobile 
lunar and Mars explorers.

Newman anticipates that the BioSuit could be ready by the time humans 
are ready to launch an expedition to Mars, possibly in about 10 
years. Current spacesuits could not handle the challenges of such an 
exploratory mission, Newman says.

A NEW APPROACH

Newman's prototype suit is a revolutionary departure from the 
traditional model. Instead of using gas pressurization, which exerts 
a force on the astronaut's body to protect it from the vacuum of 
space, the suit relies on mechanical counter-pressure, which involves 
wrapping tight layers of material around the body. The trick is to 
make a suit that is skintight but stretches with the body, allowing 
freedom of movement.

Over the past 40 years, spacesuits have gotten progressively heavier, 
and they now weigh in at about 300 pounds. That bulk -- much of which 
is due to multiple layers and the life support system coupled with 
the gas-pressurization -- severely constrains astronauts' movements. 
About 70 to 80 percent of the energy they exert while wearing the 
suit goes towards simply working against the suit to bend it.

"You can't do much bending of the arms or legs in that type of suit," 
Newman says.

When an astronaut is in a micro-gravity environment (for example, 
doing a spacewalk outside the International Space Station), working 
in such a massive suit is manageable, but, as Newman says, "It's a 
whole different ballgame when we go to the moon or Mars, and we have 
to go back to walking and running, or loping."

Another advantage to her BioSuit is safety: if a traditional 
spacesuit is punctured by a tiny meteorite or other object, the 
astronaut must return to the space station or home base immediately, 
before life-threatening decompression occurs. With the BioSuit, a 
small, isolated puncture can be wrapped much like a bandage, and the 
rest of the suit will be unaffected.

Newman says the finished BioSuit may be a hybrid that incorporates 
some elements of the traditional suits, including a gas-pressured 
torso section and helmet. An oxygen tank can be attached to the back.

The MIT researchers are focusing on the legs and arms, which are 
challenging parts to design. In the Man-Vehicle Lab at MIT, students 
test various wrapping techniques, based on 3D models they've created 
of the human in motion and how the skin stretches during locomotion, 
bending, climbing or driving a rover.

Key to their design is the pattern of lines on the suit, which 
correspond to lines of non-extension (lines on the skin that don't 
extend when you move your leg). Those lines provide a stiff 
"skeleton" of structural support, while providing maximal mobility.

To be worn in space, the BioSuit must deliver close to one-third the 
pressure exerted by Earth's atmosphere, or about 30 kPa 
(kilopascals). The current prototype suit exerts about 20 KPa 
consistently, and the researchers have gotten new models up to 25 to 
30 KPa.

STAYING IN SHAPE

The suits could also help astronauts stay fit during the six-month 
journey to Mars. Studies have shown that astronauts lose up to 40 
percent of their muscle strength in space, but the new outfits could 
be designed to offer varying resistance levels, allowing the 
astronauts to exercise against the suits during a long flight to Mars.

Although getting the suits into space is the ultimate goal, Newman is 
also focusing on Earth-bound applications in the short term, such as 
athletic training or helping people walk.

The new BioSuit builds on ideas developed in the 1960s and 1970s by 
Paul Webb, who first came up with the concept for a "space activity 
suit," and Saul Iberall, who postulated the lines of non-extension. 
However, neither the technology nor the materials were available then.

"Dr. Webb had a great idea, before its time. We're building on that 
work to try to make it feasible," says Newman.

The project was initially funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts.

--MIT--

Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office