Interview
Dava Newman: Space Suit of the Future
- Future spacesuits are being designed around mechanical counterpressure, a technology that applies pressure directly to the skin rather than using gas to inflate a suit, making the concept technically feasible but currently limited to the research and development stage with no flight systems yet operational.
- The design paradigm shifts from current 140-kilogram gas-pressurized suits, which limit mobility, to a "biosuit" concept intended to be an "order of magnitude less" massive while providing maximum flexibility for planetary exploration on the Moon or Mars.
- Mechanical counterpressure requires applying approximately one-third of an atmosphere (30 kilopascals or 4.3 pounds per square inch) consistently across the body to sustain human life without the mass penalty of a gas-filled balloon.
- Patternings and material engineering are the primary areas of current patent activity, focusing on how to effectively shape and apply the counterpressure to allow human movement akin to an "Olympic athlete" or "extreme explorer."
- The helmet is envisioned to decouple from the pressure system, serving instead as a dedicated information portal featuring augmented reality, topography maps, and embedded lab capabilities for real-time regolith analysis.
- Development is conducted by a multidisciplinary team including engineers, architects, design students, and industrial designers, integrating aesthetic considerations and athletic performance metrics into the suit's form-fitting structure.
- The "biosuit" utilizes a "skin-out" design approach, modeling human motion to ensure the suit does not constrain the body, contrasting with traditional methods that shrink a spacecraft around a person.
- Long-term mission strategy for Mars prioritizes human mobility for searching evidence of life, necessitating suits that function as essential life support systems for active exploration rather than passive habitat occupancy.
- Future exploration is defined as a collaborative suite of humans, robots, and smart systems, where highly mobile human explorers complement robotic capabilities to maximize the efficacy of the mission.