This week Prada has announced they are going to infinity and beyond with an unexpected partnership with Axiom Space.
The luxury fashion house is designing lunar spacesuits for NASA’s Artemis III Mission. It’s the first moon landing with a crew since 1972. The engineering of the suits are going to give astronauts “advanced capabilities for space exploration,” says Prada.
The mission is also be the first to include a woman a person of colour to land on the moon. According to Nasa, the astronauts are going to take pictures and videos of the moon’s surface, survey geology and retrieve various samples from the lunar south pole.
The suits are an evolution of the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit and will feature “innovative technologies and design” to assist and protect astronauts against the harsh lunar environments.
The lunar spacesuits also involve specialised tools fit for exploration and scientific work, providing NASA with commercially developed systems to let people work and live on the moon.
Fashion Meets Science
The partnership is a monumental step for both fashion and science with Prada’s marketing director, Lorenzo Bertelli calling it “a true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilisation.
“We are honoured to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space. Our decades of experimentation, cutting-edge technology and design knowhow – which started back in the 90s with Luna Rossa challenging for the America’s Cup – will now be applied to the design of a spacesuit for the Artemis era.”
Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffrendini further comments on the collaboration:
“Prada’s technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques and innovative design concepts will bring advanced technologies instrumental in ensuring not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”
Although these space cadets will be rocking the infamous Milan-based brand, they should not expect to see
“paisley spacesuits or any fancy patterns like that. Maintaining a good thermal environment is really the critical thing,”
says professor Jefferey Hoffman, who flew out five NASA missions and carried our four spacewalks.
The Artemis III Mission, featuring Prada’s specialised spacesuits will follow the Artemis II Mission involving flying a capsule around the moon late next year or early 2025.
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