Mars Surface Exploration Spacesuit

Mars' atmosphere is not suitable for human life. For humans to live and work there, they will need the protection of a full body suit not unlike that worn by the astronauts who walked on the moon during the Apollo program. The Mars Suit must be flexible enough to allow the astronauts to work with both cumbersome construction materials and sophisticated machinery, and at the same time keep them safe from the harsh atmosphere.

Supplier


In March of 2013, Mars One contracted Paragon Space Development Corporation to perform a conceptual design study as the first step towards developing life support and space suits systems for the Mars One mission. Paragon will be designing a conceptual design for the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) and Mars Surface Exploration Spacesuit System.

During this study, Paragon will identify major suppliers, concepts, and technologies that exist today and can be used as the baseline architecture for further development. The Mars suits will enable the settlers to work outside of the habitat and explore the surface of Mars.

One of the major suppliers Paragon will be looking at for the Mars suit is the leader in spacesuit technology, ILC Dover. ILC specializes in the use of high-performance flexible materials, serving the aerospace, personal protection, and pharmaceutical industries. They make the spacesuits for NASA, including outfitting all of the astronauts in the Apollo program.

Potential Space Suit Design


The ILC Dover I-Suit is designed for multiple roles, including planetary excursion and microgravity EVA. The first generation I-Suit is configured to work with the existing Space Shuttle EMU helmet assembly and wrist bearing/disconnect, and incorporates a 2-bearing hip, hard waist entry, and walking boots. The suit meets requirements imposed by NASA for pressure, structural loads, joint mobility (torque and range of motion), and resizing capability.

While the EMU is solely intended for the microgravity environment, where weight is not an issue, the I-Suit's planetary role makes weight a critical factor. By replacing the EMU's fiberglass Hard Upper Torso (HUT) section with a soft upper torso, or SUT, and by using lightweight titanium in place of stainless steel for load-bearing metal components, the I-suit weighs only 65 pounds (29 kg) without its life support backpack or thermal/micrometeoroid layer, compared to 107 lbs (49 kg) for the EMU. The suit also features a graphite-epoxy shoulder bearing housing, demonstrating the use of this material in place of aluminum. Replacing all the suit's bearing housings with graphite-epoxy would save a further ten pounds (5 kg).

Joint torque in fabric spacesuits is minimized by the careful placement of gores, convolutes, and pleats into the fabric structure. Improvements in joint torque in the I-Suit are primarily the result of refinement of these techniques, rather than the result of new technologies, though the suit does incorporate Vectran in its restraint cords, which has somewhat improved thermal properties over the Spectra used in shuttle suits.