NASA’s 2028 Moon-landing date for astronauts is threatened by delays in spacesuit development, according to an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released Monday.
Sole-source spacesuits: NASA awarded Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace suit contracts in 2022. The agency initially set the Moon and microgravity spacesuit demos in 2025 and 2026, respectively. But delays mounted.
- Collins dropped out after two years—leaving Axiom Space as the only vendor.
- NASA rescheduled its demos to 2028 on the Moon and 2030 on the ISS, although now it says Axiom Space’s progress and the new Artemis schedule may allow testing next year.
- The OIG maintains both Moon and microgravity demos may not happen until 2031.
Why the issues? NASA’s firm-fixed-price and service-based contract was supposed to shield the agency from ballooning budgets, while giving commercial spacesuit construction a boost.
But the suits carried “higher levels of technical, financial, and schedule risk”, the OIG said—adding NASA is at least partly to blame for:
- “Renting” spacewalking services before a commercial market was available;
- Adding ‘overly burdensome requirements’ to the procurement, such as submitting both microgravity and Moon bids simultaneously;
- Taking “risky contract management actions,” including partial milestone payments and using task orders on a sole-source or crossover basis.
What’s next? It looks like it will be a busy few years.
- OIG says NASA should create “interoperability standards” between Artemis lunar vehicles and spacesuits, and ask industry for input on future contracts.
- NASA says it concurs, but added it was doing its best. The contract vehicle it chose has “better cost stability in development programs” than cost reimbursement.
Axiom Space, meanwhile, received $350M in financing in February in part for spacesuit development, co-led by Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority. The company then said the financing shows “conviction in Axiom Space’s leadership position.”
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Latvia is expected to sign onto the non-binding set of principles for cooperation and norms of behavior during a ceremony at NASA HQ this morning. It will be the 62nd nation to sign onto the agreement.
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