A Georgia Tech professor will help design NASA’s latest generation of space suits

Astronauts could return to the moon within a few years, and if they do, they’ll be wearing spacesuits designed with the help of Georgia Tech’s Tom Orlando. He is a professor of chemistry and physics and founder of the Center for Space Technology and Research. He talks to GPB’s Peter Billow about the science of spacesuit design.

Peter Bello: When designing these suits, they take various factors into consideration, including temperature. Tell us a little about the extremes you consider when designing the suit.

Tom Orlando: It is an important question. So there are extremes in many ways. There are temperature extremes. If they are there at night, the temperature will be surprisingly low. So the temperature isn’t really that big of a deal when it comes to things sticking to the suit. And you will not guess this, but the dust and dust is stuck because it is filled. And these suits pick up like electrostatic fabric or plastic and you get lots of charged grains stuck to the suit. And that’s a real problem. So astronauts are very concerned about dust.

Peter Bello: And so what can you do to keep the dust from sticking?

Tom Orlando: One of the things you want to do – and this is our focus – is to prevent these materials from accumulating electrostatic particles. The easiest way to do this is to find [be] leading. And it doesn’t seem like you want to have a suit of iron on the astronauts. It’s a throwback to the days of medieval armor, isn’t it? But that’s not it. It’s actually a very, very light weight material with a very high, very thin coating. And it allows the suit to have a directional way to shed particles if you try to hold it tight.

Peter Bello: And what about rays? Radiation is a major threat to astronauts. How do you protect astronauts from radiation exposure?

Tom Orlando: The Moon has left our magnetosphere. So you have to protect yourself. You should have a very good shield to protect yourself from radiation. The mantra: We’re going to the moon, and we’re going there for a relatively long time, longer than the astronauts spent on the Apollo missions. But what we really need to do is reduce risk. And “reducing risk” means having better protection – and not just better protection, but better monitoring of radiation. So that’s a neat thing we’re trying to do with the spacesuits as well. Therefore, you can measure the change in contrast caused by this transmission material or its variant. And the idea there is to use the suits as real-time monitors of your overall ionizing radiation exposure while you’re wearing the suit during so-called off-vehicle activity. So for example when you walk up on the surface of the moon.

Peter Bello: So if you wear one of these suits on the moon and the suit has a sensor that says, “Okay, you’re exposed to a lot of radiation today. Return to the ship. You’re done now or you’re in very high danger.

Tom Orlando: That’s exactly the idea. And we’re trying to track where the beam is. If there are parts of your body that are more susceptible to exposure, we know what your total dose is and where the dose is on the body. NASA is very concerned with mapping the radiation profile on astronauts. And they have these mannequins fitted with suits to control the radiation on the mannequins during the Artemis mission flight planning.

This story comes to Reporter Newspapers/Atlanta Intown through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a nonprofit news division covering the state of Georgia..