Axiom Space and Prada Reveal the Layer Astronauts Will Wear Closest to Their Skin on the Moon

When NASA astronauts step onto the lunar surface during the Artemis IV mission, one of the few things standing between them and the vacuum of space will be a garment co-developed by a Houston spaceflight company and an Italian fashion house.

Axiom Space and Prada unveiled the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment today, the inner layer of the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit. The garment circulates cold water through a network of tubes routed across the body's major muscle groups, absorbing metabolic heat generated during spacewalks and carrying it away to the suit's life-support system, where it is expelled into space. A separate loop delivers fresh oxygen across the astronaut's face to continuously clear exhaled carbon dioxide.

The collaboration draws on Prada's background in engineered knitting and advanced materials to produce a garment designed for up to eight-hour spacewalks across multiple long-duration missions. Unlike earlier cooling garments, the Axiom version includes a fully redundant cooling circuit, providing a backup if the primary loop fails.

Axiom and Prada first announced their partnership in 2024 with the unveiling of the AxEMU's outer shell, built to withstand the thermal extremes and micrometeoroid environment of the lunar South Pole. The inner layer represents the next phase of that collaboration, moving from the suit's exterior to the layer worn directly against the astronaut's body.

Artemis IV is currently the next crewed lunar surface mission on NASA's schedule.

Source: Axiom Space

Image credit: Axiom Space