Elon Musk Reveals SpaceX Suit, How's It Compare To NASA Spacesuits?

Over the weekend SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he would be sharing the first photos of SpaceX spacesuits this week. Early Wednesday morning he delivered on that promise when he posted a photo to Instagram of the new suit.

The photo shows a clean white suit and a sleek helmet with a large transparent front mask. In the photo someone is wearing the suit and sitting near a window with what appears to be outer space outside. While the model wasn’t actually in space, the caption assured those on Instagram that the suit is functional.

“Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup). Already tested to double vacuum pressure. Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function. Easy to do either separately,” the caption reads.

While the photo and short description doesn’t tell us much about the suit, Musk promised that more photos would be released in the coming days. The suits are being developed for NASA’s commercial crew program Musk previously said in a tweet. The agency has been working closely with SpaceX on resupply missions to the International Space Station since 2012. In 2015 NASA ordered its first crewed mission to the ISS by SpaceX, a mission that was originally planned for late 2017 but the first manned test flight will likely occur in 2018.

SpaceX will launch those crew members in one of its Dragon capsules that are currently used for bringing resupply payloads up to and down from the ISS. The company is also planning to send a privately crewed craft beyond the moon in 2018 when two private citizens will fly around the moon.

The suits NASA currently uses for spacewalks, called Extravehicular Mobility Units, were designed in 1974, and were first used in 1981, according to a NASA report. They’ve been refurbished a number of times over the last four decades but no completely new suits have ever been introduced to the program. These suits were only designed to be used for about 15 years.

Of the original 18, 11 are still in use and NASA has been working to design new suits for nearly a decade but they won’t be ready for at least another five to 10 years. The spacesuits designed for activities outside of the station or any type of spacecraft are different from the suits worn during launch and landing, these suits cannot be worn out in space. NASA’s suits for launch and landing are newer and more updated than the EMU’s.

It’s unclear whether the suit Musk posted is a suit designed solely for space flight, or whether it is also for spending time out in space on spacewalks. He didn’t specify in the caption, but as SpaceX has mainly focused on space flight so far, it would make the most sense if the SpaceX suits were specifically for launch and reentry. They also appear to lack the extensive equipment that would be necessary for travel outside of a craft in space.