It was announced Wednesday that NASA would purchase new and more versatile spacesuits for its astronauts, which is one step closer to sending humans to the Moon. NASA, which has been attempting to develop a new spacesuit in-house for more than a decade, has decided to instead purchase spacesuit services from two companies, Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace.

NASA has worked on technology that these companies will be able to use, but they will also be responsible for developing the spacesuits that will be used on the International Space Station and on the moon. By 2025, Axiom and Collins plan to demonstrate their spacesuits outside the space station to NASA.

The previous spacesuit has been NASA's workhorse for more than 40 years, said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center. In addition to continuing on the International Space Station, these new capabilities will also allow us to continue on the Artemis Program and on to Mars."

NASA will provide a limited amount of guaranteed funding to support spacesuit programs at Axiom and Collins, as part of its ongoing embrace of commercial space and goal to become "one of many" spaceflight customers. Nevertheless, the bulk of the funding will be distributed by way of task orders between now and 2034

Despite NASA having some requirements for spacesuits, companies will be responsible for designing them. As part of NASA's goal of allowing private companies to innovate and design spacesuits that meet NASA's needs as well as those of private customers, this is an important step.

The CEO of Axiom Space, Mike Suffredini, said Wednesday that the company's customers are definitely interested in spacewalking. Due to the contract award, Axiom will be able to hire 300 additional employees to help with the spacesuit project, which must now operate in dusty conditions on the surface of the Moon. KBR, Air-Lock, David Clark Company, and Paragon Space Development Corporation are Axiom's partners.

As a result of NASA's years of experience and all the work they have done to advance the design, it's great to have a partnership with them. We can come in as a commercial company and work with them to build the suit in such a way that it is the lowest cost possible, so we can both use it to our advantage."

A team led by Collins Aerospace, ILC Dover, and Oceaneering won the second prize. These three companies have experience building spacesuits, including Collins, who designed Apollo spacesuits during the first Moon landings.

For this opportunity, the companies beat out other bidders by a wide margin. The Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services, or xEVAS, the contract was announced by NASA with over 40 firms listed as "interested parties." Other interested parties included Blue Origin, Honeywell Aerospace, Leidos, Sierra Space, and SpaceX.

A number of NASA field centers have led several different programs to develop a new generation of spacesuits over the past 14 years. NASA has spent $420 million over that period on various spacesuit efforts, but these efforts have yielded limited results. NASA initially intended to build six "Xemu" suits with contractor and vendor support before issuing additional contracts.

A key recommendation from the space agency, according to Lara Kearney, director of Johnson Space Center's Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, was to share what it had learned through Xemu with the industry and let the industry take it from there.

A government was never intended to be a production house, she said. The question was when the transition would take place since we never intended to be a production house. Our decision was to pass on the knowledge we had gained from Xemu to these guys, and that would set them on the road to success. It was more likely that we would actually be able to meet our schedule if we got them on the way to delivering flight suits sooner."

The Artemis III mission is expected to land two astronauts on the Moon in 2025, according to NASA's current timeline. Due to a number of factors, including the readiness of a lunar lander and spacesuits capable of handling lunar dust, independent reviews of the Artemis program have indicated that this date is more aspirational than realistic.