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Axiom has shifted lunar spacesuit focus to qualifying the equipment ahead of Artemis III mission.
Governments and companies are gearing up for a new and more dynamic phase of human activity on the Moon, and they used the recent International Astronautical Congress here as an opportunity to detail efforts to provide the infrastructure vital to a new age of discovery on the lunar surface.
The European Space Agency (ESA) initiated a multispacecraft effort to deploy a GPS-like navigation capability and critical communications architecture to support operations on the Moon. Several companies outlined efforts to sustain human activity in the hostile environment, while Japan’s Ispace presented plans for a network of lunar-relay satellites.
- Axiom Space is working on more than 40 tools for astronauts to use on the Moon
- ESA details plans to increase the size of the Lunar View module
Axiom Space used the 75th iteration of the annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC) to unveil its spacesuit. Developed in tandem with fashion company Prada, the new design is envisaged to enable astronauts to survive and operate on the Moon. Unlike the Apollo mission suits, the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) features greater mobility and a wider range of sizes. It will also provide greater system redundancy to keep astronauts safe and an onboard diagnostic system to monitor system performance, said Russell Ralston, executive vice president of Axiom’s extravehicular activity program.
The company completed the first integrated test of the AxEMU design with NASA and SpaceX this year, using development hardware for the Human Landing System for Artemis III. “We are making a ton of progress,” Ralston said, while acknowledging, “we certainly have a hill to climb.”
Axiom is embarking on a series of trials that should take the design from the company’s lab to test rigs and qualification trials in a thermal vacuum chamber. Those steps are being tackled incrementally and likely will result in some design tweaks, he said.
Additionally, Axiom is working on more than 40 different tools for lunar use, he said, including some to clean dust from the spacesuits. The partnership with Prada has shaped material design choices to deal with lunar dust, he added.
Startup Interstellar Lab is also preparing for Moon operations, seeking to provide a greenhouse capability to enable plant life. The company is aiming for a lunar mission proof-of-concept demonstration in 2026-28, CEO Barbara Belvisi. said.
Rolls-Royce also said it has begun hardware testing to refine its concept for a microreactor to provide nuclear power on the Moon. The building blocks for such a system are at a relatively high technology readiness level, but they are at a much lower level from a system integration perspective, said Jake Thompson, director of novel nuclear and special projects at Rolls-Royce, which is drawing on its heritage of building reactors for the UK’s submarines. The company is one of several, including Lockheed Martin, looking to provide nuclear power options to NASA for Moon missions in the 2030s.
“With over 400 planned lunar missions by space agencies and private companies in the next two decades, this program marks a significant step toward sustainable lunar exploration and the development of a lunar economy,” ESA said in announcing the Moonlight Lunar Communications and Navigation Services program. The project initially encompasses four navigation satellites and one for communications, all connected to Earth using a network of three dedicated ground stations.
“We will need key services in terms of communication, in terms of positioning, navigation and timing,” said Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration.
The program should facilitate precise, autonomous landings and surface mobility while enabling high-speed, low-latency communication and data transfer between the Earth and Moon. The coverage will include the Moon’s south pole, which has drawn particular interest for future lunar operations, Neuenschwander said. The area offers light peaks that are useful for generating solar power and craters of darkness to tap polar ice for generating water, oxygen and rocket fuel. To navigate there with precision, ESA aims to deliver submeter accuracy with its program, he added.
Italy’s Telespazio is the prime contractor on the program, while Surrey Satellite Technology will build the communication relay satellite ESA would like to be operational in 2026. The UK-based Airbus unit’s program, Lunar Pathfinder, is supposed to pave the way for Moonlight services to deploy starting in 2028 and be fully operational two years later.
ESA said it is working with its U.S. and Japanese counterparts on LunarNet, a framework for lunar communication and navigation standards to underpin future Moon infrastructure. The first lunar navigation interoperability test is planned for 2029, ESA said.
Ispace’s lunar relay satellites presented at the IAC event, Alpine and Lupine, are being designed to support NASA’s CP-12, led by Draper Laboratory. The satellites would support the Apex 1.0 lunar lander that is bound for the Schrodinger Basin. The lander is also being developed by Ispace.
RTX’s small satellite manufacturer, Blue Canyon Technologies, is supplying its Venus-100 bus for the Alpine and Lupine spacecraft. The relay spacecraft will carry bidirectional S-band command, telemetry links and a Ka-band lunar proximity uplink and X-band downlink to Earth for low-latency, real-time communications.
“After the primary surface mission, Alpine and Lupine are circularized into a high circular polar orbit with near-global coverage and linger points at the poles,” the company said. “For lunar south pole landing sites, both relay satellites offer more than 70% simultaneous visibility of the lunar surface and Earth.”
ESA and Thales Alenia Space also disclosed a change in scope for the Esprit refueling module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway orbital outpost. The €164 million ($177 million) modification calls for increasing the size of the Lunar View refueling module to 10 metric tons from 6 metric tons. The hardware is designed to provide xenon and chemical propellants to the outpost. The design change is possible because NASA shifted the launch of the Lunar View to a Space Launch System Block 1B launcher, offering greater payload capacity, Thales Alenia Space said.
The larger size will reduce the need for resupply missions, ESA said. It will enable other changes, including the provision of two places to attach the Canadian Space Agency’s Canadarm3 mobile robotic arm to work on the Gateway. The Lunar View is due for launch in 2030 on the Artemis V mission. The Lunar Link, the other element of the Esprit module due to provide connectivity between the Gateway and the Moon, is due for launch in 2026.
—With Garrett Reim in Seattle
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