A spacesuit should allow excellent freedom of movement for the wearer, who may often have to go on spacewalks outside their ship to perform delicate equipment repairs.<\/p>\n
It also helps if it\u2019s quick to put on, in case there\u2019s an emergency. And it should also feature a full life-support system to maintain internal air and temperature.<\/p>\n
An astronaut may have to wear a spacesuit for many hours, so it needs to cater for food, rehydration and other bodily functions\u2026<\/p>\n
Over the years, there have been a lot of different designs<\/a>, not all of them exactly fulfilling these criteria.<\/p>\n Back in 1962, a bizarre hard-shelled suit known as the Grumman<\/a> was briefly tested. Looking like a cross between a dustbin and a blender, it had extremely limited freedom of movement.<\/p>\n Other hard-shelled \u2018AX\u2019 suits<\/a> (see main picture)were tried, resembling futuristic suits of armour and often made of aluminium with rotary joints, but none ever made it onto a mission \u2013 they were just too bulky and had too many joints to seize up.<\/p>\n Instead, most real spacesuits were made from flexible, multilayer composite fabrics with hard shells limited to areas such as the head and upper torso.<\/p>\n Future suits may be more robust.<\/p>\n Researchers are currently attempting to develop new self-healing materials so that damage will never be a problem for long missions to Mars<\/a>. But perhaps the most exotic is the BioSuit<\/a> proposed by Prof Dava Newman at MIT.<\/p>\n Astronauts would don a stretchy fabric suit that, when activated by an electric current, shrinks embedded shape memory alloy coils to become skin-tight<\/a> for the ultimate in unrestricted movement, not to mention space-chic.<\/p>\n Alternatively, the suit with the most yuck-factor is one with a proposed FO-RO (forward and reverse osmosis) unit.<\/p>\n Much like the Stillsuit from Dune \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 this suit recycles the astronaut\u2019s pee<\/a> back into drinking water.<\/p>\n This article is an answer to the question (asked by Erica Morris, via email) \u2018What will spacesuits of the future look like?\u2019<\/p>\n To submit your questions, email us at questions@sciencefocus.com, or message our Facebook<\/a>, X<\/a>, or Instagram<\/a> pages (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location).<\/p>\n Check out our ultimate fun facts<\/a> page for more mind-blowing science<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Spacesuit.jpg\")
The BioSuit proposed by Prof Dava Newman at MIT – Image credit: Professor Dava Newman\/MIT\/Guillermo Trotti\/Douglas Sonders Photography<\/p>\n![\"specialised](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Urine-collecting-spacesuit.jpg\")
A prototype of the urine collection garment – Credit: Etlin et al<\/p>\n