Emily Chan
The astronauts slated to return to the moon’s surface in 2026 as part of NASA’s first human mission to the lunar South Pole will be wearing Prada in space.
Axiom Space, a private space company, has partnered with the Italian luxury fashion house Prada to provide the surface suits and spacewalk systems for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which is set to launch in September 2026. The mission marks humanity’s first return to the moon since 1972.
Axiom Space and Prada debuted the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan.
“Our elite teams have redefined spacesuit development, establishing new pathways to innovative solutions and applying a state-of-the-art design approach for the AxEMU,” Matt Ondler, the president of Axiom Space, said. “We have broken the mold.”
The outer layer of the spacesuit is designed to reflect heat and is mostly white, just like the suits the Apollo astronauts wore more than 50 years ago when they walked on the moon.
But the suit has been updated to have a few hints of gray and red stripes that resemble the ones on Italy’s Luna Rossa America’s Cup boat, which was also sponsored by Prada.
The main goal of the modernized suit is to protect astronauts in the harsh environment of space, with improved mobility.
“One of the missions that NASA wants to do is to try to find water craters at the South Pole. These are some of the coldest places in the universe. And so this suit has to be designed very cleverly,” Ondler said.
There are mountains and deep craters at the lunar South Pole. The sun only stays below or just above the horizon. So, temperatures can range from 130 degrees Fahrenheit in sunlit areas to -334 degrees Fahrenheit in permanently shadowed regions.
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