Wearing Prada on the moon: Fashion house to partner with NASA on lunar spacesuits
Internationally known fashion company Prada has announced its taking its designs to outer space.
The Italian Luxury company announced Wednesday it is partnering with Axiom Space to design NASA’s next generation of lunar spacesuits for the team setting out on the 2025 Artemis III mission to the moon.
The Artemis III crew will be the first crewed lunar landing in more than 50 years, since Apollo 17 in 1972. NASA said this mission will be the first time humans explore the region near the moon’s South Pole.
Artemis II, the second scheduled mission, plans to make history with the Nov. 2024 mission around the moon. It will be the first time a woman, Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, and a person of color, Pilot Victor Glover, are going to be on a moon mission.
The Artemis III crew has not yet been named by NASA.
“Prada’s technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques, and innovative design concepts will bring advance technologies instrumental in ensuring not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits,” Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini said in a statement.
The organizations said the new spacesuits will have updated technology and greater protection from the elements. It will enable greater exploration of the moon than ever before, the joint media release said.
“We are honored to a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space,” Prada Group Marketing Director Lorenzo Bertelli said in a statement.
“Our decades of experimentation, cutting-edge technology and design know-how – which started back in the ‘90s with Luna Rossa challenging for the America’s cup – will now be applied to the design of a spacesuit for the Artemis era," Bertelli added.