WASHINGTON — As NASA grapples with more space suit problems on the International Space Station, the company it selected to develop replacement suits says it is withdrawing from that effort.
In a statement to SpaceNews on June 25, a spokesperson for Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX Corp., said the company and NASA had agreed to “descope” the development of spacesuits for the ISS under task orders that are part of a contract that was awarded two years ago. Reuters first reported that the company was trying to cancel the contract.
“After a thorough review, Collins Aerospace and NASA mutually agreed to descope task orders for Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS). Collins remains committed to supporting NASA and human spaceflight programs,” the company said.
NASA announced in June 2022 that it has selected Collins and Axiom Space for the xEVAS program, which aims to commercially develop spacesuits that will be offered as a service to NASA. NASA then awarded Collins a task order to work on a suit for use on the ISS, while Axiom received a task order to develop spacesuits for Artemis moon missions.
Collins had publicly reported good progress in that lawsuit. In February, the company said it had completed tests of a prototype of the suit on parabolic aircraft flights that generated 20 seconds of microgravity at a time. “My honest opinion is that it’s a much more capable suit,” Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut who later became Collins’ chief test astronaut, said at the time.
The company did not reveal why it wanted to descope work on the project. Industry sources said they believed Collins had suffered delays and cost overruns and concluded it was no longer viable for the company to continue working on it, especially given the fixed-price nature of the contract.
NASA has not commented on Collins’ decision to end work on the suit and what steps, if any, are needed to find a new suit developer. In addition to Axiom and Collins, SpaceX has independently developed its own spacesuit that will be tested during the private astronaut mission Polaris Dawn, flying on a Crew Dragon. That mission is expected to start in mid-July.
NASA issued “crossover” task orders to both Axiom and Collins last July, allowing Axiom to begin exploring how it could adapt its lunar spacesuit for use on the ISS and Collins to adapt its ISS spacesuit for lunar missions. Axiom has focused on the Artemis suit, including a recent integrated test with NASA and SpaceX to demonstrate how the suits would integrate with the Starship lunar lander and other elements of the Artemis 3 mission.
Collins’ announcement comes after NASA experienced two consecutive scrubbed spacewalks from the ISS. NASA has canceled a June 13 spacewalk after astronaut Matt Dominick reported a “suit discomfort” problem shortly before the spacewalk was set to begin. NASA did not elaborate on the specific problem with the suit.
NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson and Mike Barratt were scheduled to perform another spacewalk on June 24, performing the tasks planned for the earlier, postponed spacewalk. But just as the outer airlock hatch opened, Dyson reported a water leak when she disconnected a service and cooling umbilical cord to her suit, as planned.
“There’s literally water everywhere,” Dyson reported as the water turned to ice and formed a layer on the visor of her helmet. Reconnecting the line stopped the leak, but NASA called off the spacewalk as a precaution. The agency said on June 25 that astronauts were inspecting the suit and examining procedures for future spacewalks, but did not confirm whether a planned spacewalk on July 2 would take place as planned.
The spacesuits currently used on the station, known as Extravehicular Mobility Units or EMUs, are decades old and have encountered problems as they age. In 2022, NASA waited several months to use the suits for routine spacewalks after an astronaut reported seeing a thin film of water on the inside of his visor at the end of a spacewalk. NASA concluded that “integrated system performance” rather than a specific hardware failure was the cause of the water formation.
NASA safety advisors have been warning for some time about the risks of aging EMUs. “It is an undeniable fact that the 40-year-old EMUs used in ISS operations are reaching the end of their service lives,” NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel noted in a 2019 recommendation, calling for an “immediate transition” to new suits. before the risk for EVA [extravehicular activity] becomes uncontrollable.” That recommendation remained open as of the panel’s last annual report in January.