Axiom and – NASA’s Artemis III and IV missions will rely on a new spacesuit system from Axiom Space, built around a cooled inner garment and a pressurized outer suit. With Prada’s role in engineered knitting and manufacturing, the designs blend practical survival engineer
When an astronaut steps away from Earth, the human body has a brutal problem: vacuum and time. Without protection, the body would lose consciousness in around 15 seconds, and within minutes death would follow. That’s why the suits planned for NASA’s Artemis III and IV missions matter so much—and why Axiom Space is bringing in an unexpected partner. with a name more familiar to runways than launchpads.
The starting point is the inner layer. Beneath the bulky white suit astronauts will wear. there’s a tight-fitting garment called the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment. or LCVG—think of it as the spaceman’s long johns. Past versions were described as looking like the world’s most expensive pajamas. This new one aims for a different look, resembling a sleek superhero outfit, but the goal isn’t only aesthetics.
Inside the LCVG are intricately woven tubes that circulate cold water across major muscle groups. The water absorbs metabolic heat and carries it away to the portable life support system carried in the backpack. If the primary cooling circuit fails, there’s a fully redundant cooling circuit—backup built in, not added later. On the lunar surface. missions demand plenty of physical effort. and without active cooling. heatstroke and organ failure would come quickly.
That’s where Prada enters the story. Axiom suggests the Italian fashion house’s expertise in engineered knitting and manufacturing capabilities was a big draw for the design. At the unveiling, Prada wasn’t only in the background—its onstage representative was its chief marketing officer. The connection may be practical on the manufacturing side. but the public-facing decision is hard to miss: people notice suits that look more like Steve Rogers than tubed-up undergarments.
Above the inner garment comes the outer suit: the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU. Its most urgent job is pressurization. In extremely low pressure, the air in an astronaut’s lungs would expand and tear tissues. Liquids in the body would face another threat—water in muscles has lower boiling points in space. so it could vaporize. swelling the body as if it were caught in a real-life Violet Beauregarde moment. With bubbles forming in blood, circulation would fail within about a minute.
So the outer suit is engineered to maintain safe, comfortable pressure. The white material isn’t just for show. It reflects solar heat and provides protection against lunar dust, particles that can linger in the lungs for months.
The backpack system keeps working at this layer too. A ventilation loop from the backpack blows fresh oxygen into the helmet and across an astronaut’s face. It prevents a different kind of suffocation: not lack of oxygen, but an excess of carbon dioxide. The process washes away exhaled CO2, routes it to the life support system, filters it, and recirculates breathable oxygen. Like the inner suit, the AxEMU includes redundant safety systems in case of failure.
The AxEMU is built for long spacewalks—over eight hours—and it’s designed to support a wide range of body types. from the 1st to the 99th percentiles for males and females. marking a departure from Apollo-era custom suits. Advanced coatings on the helmet and visor are meant to enhance astronauts’ vision. There are also custom in-house gloves described by Axiom as featuring several advancements over the gloves used today.
For Artemis III, the suit isn’t arriving in a single leap of faith. The mission is scheduled for 2027 and will act as a test run for the new suit and new lunar landers in near-Earth orbit. Then comes Artemis IV. Currently scheduled for 2028, it will mark the first crewed Moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Artemis IV also brings a first-of-its-kind destination: the lunar south pole. There. the suit has to handle extreme cold while astronauts spend about a week collecting samples and searching for water ice. Axiom says the suit is designed to withstand the coldest temperatures at the pole for at least two hours. Whether they find water ice or not. the suit’s engineering is built around one unglamorous reality—on the Moon. survival is the main mission. and the clothing is what makes it possible.
Artemis III Artemis IV Axiom Space AxEMU LCVG Prada spacesuit liquid cooling and ventilation garment portable life support system lunar south pole pressurization CO2 scrubbing life support