Extreme Makeover: Outer Space Style

June 17, 2008— -- The defining image of space exploration is set for a facelift as the spacesuit prepares for its first update since the late 1970s.

NASA has selected a company to design and outfit new spacesuits made specifically for lunar exploration. The Constellation Space Suit System contract, announced last week, is a critical step in sending a manned mission to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

"We've now got all of our prime contracts in place," said Jeff Hanley, manager for the Constellation program at Houston's Johnson Space Center. He said he expects to have American astronauts "on [the] moon by end of the next decade."

The contract, awarded to Oceaneering International Inc of Houston, could be worth up to $745 million over the next 10 years.

"We're ready to put them to work and get ready to put bootprints back on the moon," said Glenn Lutz, NASA project manager for Extravehicular Activity Systems.

Current suits, called extravehicular mobility units, like the ones used on the International Space Station and on shuttle missions, were "built for a completely different set of problems," and not for exploring the moon, Lutz said.

Manned space flight began in 1961, and suit designers had to devise a way to maintain a stable internal pressure in the vacuum of space.

The first astronauts wore a suit called the Mark V suit -- a modified version of a pressure suit used by U.S. military pilots during high altitude flights. However, they did not inflate it, wearing it just in case the Project Mercury capsule lost pressure.

The Mercury missions ended in 1963, but the next generation of spacesuits was already being designed for Project Gemini. These new suits, despite being outfitted with temperature regulating systems, were the first designed to retain some flexibility when inflated.

On June 3, 1965, when Ed White became the first person to leave the relative safety of the spacecraft for the first spacewalk, he was wearing a Gemini spacesuit.