Field Guide · Volume I

Engineering
EVA.

The hardest spacecraft is the one that fits a human. A pressure vessel you can walk in. A thermal blanket you can grip a tool through. A life-support system you wear. Below: every operational and concept design — what they're made of, why they look the way they look, and who's worn them.

Suits

Eras

1969 → 2026+

Layers per suit

DRAG TO ORBIT · LOCKED ON CENTER

Anatomy

What you're
actually wearing.

A spacesuit isn't fabric — it's a stack. Fourteen layers, each fighting a different killer: pressure, vacuum boil-off, thermal shock, radiation, micrometeoroid impacts, sweat, fatigue. Hover any layer.

LCVG Liquid Cooling & Ventilation Garment

Tube-laced spandex worn against the skin. 91 meters of plastic tubing carry chilled water at 7 °C around your body to dump the 600 W of metabolic heat you produce on a hard EVA.

Comm Cap "Snoopy"

Microphones over the cheekbones, headphones over the ears, fabric to keep them in place. Named for Snoopy because, at the right angle, that's exactly what it looks like.

MAG Maximum Absorbency Garment

A space diaper. EVAs are 8 hours. Sometimes 9. There's no airlock break. You wear it. Modern designs are working on actual on-suit waste systems.

Pressure Bladder Urethane / Nylon

The only layer that has to be airtight. Holds 30 kPa of oxygen — about a third of sea-level pressure, all of it pure O₂. If this layer fails, you have ~15 seconds of useful consciousness.

Restraint Layer Dacron / Polyester

Without it, the bladder would balloon into a sphere. The restraint takes the structural load and forces the suit to keep your shape. Every joint becomes a hinge in this layer.

06–10

Multi-layer Insulation Mylar & Kapton (×7)

Seven aluminized films separated by Dacron netting. Thermal radiation bounces between them and never reaches your skin. Same principle as a Thermos bottle, just stacked.

Ortho-fabric Nomex blend

Fire-resistant. The Apollo 1 fire taught us that anything around an oxygen-rich crew has to be flame-retardant. This is the layer that does that job in EVA.

TMG Outer Beta cloth or Vectran

Cut and impact resistant. A micrometeoroid the size of a grain of sand hits a suit at 25 km/s. This is the layer that catches it. Vectran is 5× stronger than Kevlar by weight.

Helmet Visor Polycarbonate + gold

Outer shield is polycarbonate (impact). Outer outer is a 35-nanometer film of gold — reflects infrared without blocking visible light. That's why moonwalkers' visors are gold, not silver.

PLSS Primary Life Support System

The backpack. Holds two O₂ tanks, two CO₂ scrubbers (lithium hydroxide), the cooling-water pump, the radio, the battery, the fan, and the whole control logic. Failure of any single one ends the EVA — that's why most are duplicated.

Timeline

Six decades
of engineering.

From the first lunar A7L to the AxEMU returning to the Moon — every operational EVA suit in chronological order.

A7L

1969

Sokol

1973

EMU

1981

Mark III

1990s

Orlan-MKS

2009

Z-2

2014

SpaceX IVA

2020

ACES

2020

SpaceX EVA

2024

AxEMU

2026+

NASA · Aldrin, Apollo 11

RetiredILC Dover · 1969–1975

Apollo A7L

The first suit to walk on another world. Twelve humans wore one to the lunar surface across Apollo 11–17. Its silhouette — the gold visor, the Beta-cloth white outer, the rigid PLSS backpack — defined what "spacesuit" looks like in the public imagination, and still does.

Built by ILC Dover (then a division of Playtex — yes, the bra company) after winning a famous bake-off against Hamilton Standard. The A7L's sewn restraint layer survived where Hamilton's hard-shell prototype tore on lunar regolith. Twenty-one layers of fabric, all hand-stitched. Each suit cost about $100,000 in 1969 dollars.

Mass

81 kg

Pressure

26 kPa

EVA

7 hr

Type

Soft Lunar

Heritage · Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17

NASA · Cristoforetti

OperationalHamilton Sundstrand · 1981–Present

Shuttle / ISS EMU

The workhorse. Every Shuttle EVA, every ISS spacewalk that didn't come from the Russian segment, was done in an EMU. Fourteen of them are still in service forty years after first flight, kept alive by parts cannibalized from retired units.

The EMU was designed in the late 1970s for the Shuttle and was supposed to be retired in the 2000s. NASA's xEMU replacement program collapsed and the contract went to Axiom. Until AxEMU is operational, the original EMU keeps flying — currently one of the oldest operational pieces of crewed spaceflight hardware.

Mass

145 kg

Pressure

29.6 kPa

EVA

8.5 hr

Type

Semi-rigid HUT

Heritage · STS-6 (1983) → ISS Expedition 72 (2025)

NASA / Roscosmos

OperationalZvezda · 2009–Present

Orlan-MKS

Russian segment standard. You climb in through the backpack hatch, latch it shut, and you're suited in five minutes — versus 45 for an EMU. The whole design philosophy is: get out fast, get back fast, fix what's broken.

Higher pressure (40 kPa) means cosmonauts can skip the pre-breathe routine that EMU users need to avoid the bends. The MKS variant adds digital instrumentation, automatic thermal regulation, and improved bearings — a 60-year-old suit lineage that keeps getting upgraded instead of replaced.

Mass

110 kg

Pressure

40 kPa

EVA

7 hr

Type

Rear-entry

Heritage · ISS Russian segment, all Roscosmos EVAs

NASA · SpaceX Crew-3

OperationalSpaceX · 2020–Present

SpaceX IVA

The "tuxedo" suit. Custom-fit to each crew member with a 3D body scan. Single-piece pressure shell, gloves and helmet detach. If Dragon depressurizes, this keeps you alive long enough to get home.

Designed by Hollywood costume designer José Fernandez (Tron, Captain America) under SpaceX engineering supervision — the first commercial spacecraft suit, and the first whose look was decided in a design studio rather than a wind tunnel. The helmet shell is 3D-printed in a single piece. Touchscreen-compatible gloves so crew can operate Dragon's flat-screen controls.

Mass

~9 kg

Pressure

Cabin only

EVA

N/A · IVA

Type

Single-piece

Heritage · Demo-2, Crew-1 → Crew-9, Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn

NASA · CFT walkout

OperationalBoeing · 2020–Present

Starliner ACES

The blue suit. Lighter and more flexible than the orange Shuttle ACES it descends from. Built for the CST-100 Starliner. First flown crewed on Boe-CFT in June 2024.

40% lighter than the Shuttle suit it replaced. Uses a soft fabric pressure layer instead of a hard helmet ring. Touchscreen-capable gloves like the SpaceX suit, but with a different glove construction that's less precise but warmer. Helmet attaches with a single rotating lock.

Mass

~5 kg

Pressure

Cabin only

EVA

N/A · IVA

Type

Soft IVA

Heritage · Boeing Crew Flight Test, Starliner-1 onward

SpaceX · Polaris Dawn

OperationalSpaceX · 2024–Present

SpaceX EVA

First commercial EVA suit. Used Sept 12, 2024 by Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis on the Polaris Dawn mission — the first non-government spacewalk in history.

Evolved from the Crew Dragon IVA suit but with new joint bearings, redundant seals, a heads-up display projected onto the visor, and an external mobility-enhancing structure. SpaceX's stated goal is to get to "thousands of suits" — this is the engineering platform for that. Tethered umbilical (no PLSS yet) limits EVA to about 30 minutes.

Mass

~12 kg

Pressure

35 kPa

EVA

~30 min

Type

Tethered

Heritage · Polaris Dawn · Sept 12, 2024 — first commercial EVA

Axiom Space · Prada

In DevelopmentAxiom Space + Prada · 2024–

Axiom AxEMU

The suit that will return humans to the lunar south pole on Artemis III. Outer thermal layer engineered with Prada — the first time a fashion house has been part of spaceflight hardware development.

Built around lunar mobility: deeper knee bend, hip rotation, dexterous fingertips. Carbon-composite hard upper torso. Suit-port back entry like the Z-2 prototype it descends from. The dark training cover hides the white flight version — Axiom is staying tight-lipped about the final flight aesthetic.

Mass

~55 kg (lunar g)

Pressure

29.6 kPa

EVA

8 hr

Type

Lunar surface

Heritage · Artemis III (planned 2026/2027) — lunar south pole

Geograph · Sokol KV-2

OperationalZvezda · 1973–Present

Sokol KV-2

The suit that should have existed in 1971. Worn on every Soyuz mission since 1973. Designed in fourteen months after the Soyuz 11 crew died of decompression because they were flying without pressure suits.

"Sokol" means falcon. The suit weighs 10 kg and has been worn by every cosmonaut and every space tourist who's launched on a Soyuz — from Tim Peake to Yusaku Maezawa. Soft fabric, no rigid bearings, helmet permanently attached. It's not for spacewalks, only for keeping you alive if the capsule depressurizes during launch or re-entry.

Mass

10 kg

Pressure

40 kPa

EVA

N/A · IVA

Type

Soyuz launch

Heritage · Every Soyuz crew, 1973–present (170+ missions)

NASA · Z-2 prototype

PrototypeNASA · 2014

Z-2 Mars Concept

NASA put three Z-2 designs to a public vote in 2014. The "Technology" design won — the bioluminescence-pattern blue-green-glow suit. Tested in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. It was never flown, but its DNA is in everything that came after.

First serious test of the suit-port concept: instead of climbing into the suit through a chest opening, you enter through the back and the suit stays attached to the rover. Saves dust contamination. The AxEMU and the Collins lunar suit both inherit this. Its hard upper torso layout became the AxEMU template.

Mass

~50 kg (Mars g)

Pressure

26 kPa

EVA

8 hr (target)

Type

Suit-port

Heritage · Influenced AxEMU and the suit-port architecture used today

NASA · Mark III · D-RATS 2004

Test PlatformNASA JSC · 1990s–Ongoing

Mark III

The mobility benchmark. Hard composite upper torso, soft fabric joints, every modern surface suit measured against it for the past thirty years. Been to D-RATS analog missions in Arizona, NEEMO underwater, and the NASA Desert Field Test.

Pressurizes to 57 kPa — the highest of any flight-class suit — which means you can wear it without pre-breathing oxygen. The tradeoff: heavier, less mobile in the arms. The Mark III's joint geometry data fed directly into the AxEMU's design. Its serial number 002 has been worn by hundreds of test subjects.

Mass

~84 kg

Pressure

57 kPa

EVA

Test only

Type

Hard upper torso

Heritage · D-RATS, NEEMO, every modern lunar suit prototype

Coming Soon

Design your own.

A real spacesuit configurator. Pick a destination — LEO, lunar, Mars, Europa — and watch the engineering tradeoffs reshape your suit in real time. Your O₂ tanks. Your thermal layer. Your patch. Launch target: December 10, 2026.

← Back to Globe

EngineeringEVA.

What you'reactually wearing.

Six decadesof engineering.

Apollo A7L

Shuttle / ISS EMU

Orlan-MKS

SpaceX IVA

Starliner ACES

SpaceX EVA

Axiom AxEMU

Sokol KV-2

Z-2 Mars Concept

Mark III

Design your own.

Engineering
EVA.

What you're
actually wearing.

Six decades
of engineering.