COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—Cargo pants are so back.
On Monday night, Vast unveiled its flight suit that astronauts will wear for missions aboard its Haven-1 station, and the company’s private astronaut mission to the ISS—in addition to training and public events. When designing for people living and working in tight quarters in orbit, Vast put functionality over fashion.
“It’s tailor made for each crew,” Vast CEO Max Haot told Payload. “Like everything at Vast, it will probably iterate as we fly and as we get customers. But we’re really excited to unveil the first version of it.”
Fit check: Design choices made for the flight suits include:
- The ability to wear the jacket and pants as separates—or zipped together as a more traditional flight jumpsuit;
- Pockets and Velcro fasteners to ensure tools are always within reach in microgravity;
- Flexible material to allow for full mobility.
The suits will be custom-tailored to each astronaut—and will also include a unique mission patch, and Vast’s flight wings. Astronauts are expected to wear the cargo pants and a tech t-shirt for most of their time on station, donning the jacket for things such as hatch openings or public events.
“I can put this jacket on and zip it in and it becomes very professional,” Megan McArthur, a Vast advisor and former NASA astronaut, told Payload. “But then it also still has the utility aspect.”
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Orbital data center startup Sophia Space will partner with Kepler Communications to deploy Sophia’s operating system—called SOOS—on Kepler’s distributed in-orbit compute network.
The agreement, announced today, is Sophia’s first opportunity to validate its orbital-data-center software in space. If the partnership is successful, Kepler has the opportunity to expand Sophia’s presence in its network, and to offer in-orbit compute services to a broader customer base.
Sophia aims to upload SOOS to the Kepler network by the end of this year—where the network will remain in an isolated container, to test its ability to operate in orbit.
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