How will they look like space suits for the Orion capsule

[Pawelk198604]

I'm curious how they will look like space suits for NASA astronauts, if NASA decides to go back to the moon. Spacesuits from Apollo looked really good, especially the large spherical helmets

[phoenix_ca]

[Guest]

Something like the Z-2 perhaps?

[Nibb31]

The Z-2 suit is a technology demonstrator for planetary exploration. The suitport on the back means that it stays on the outside of the spacecraft and astronauts climb inside the suit instead of using an airlock. It's also too heavy and bulky to be carried around inside a capsule. This makes it unsuitable for in-flight activities and Orion EVAs which will be conducted by depressurizing the capsule and egressing the capsule through a relatively small hatch.

What Orion needs is a single suit that can be reconfigurable for flight, EVA and surface operations. There was one planned for Constellation, but it was cancelled along with the rest of the program. So NASA is looking at improving the orange ACES suits that were used on the Shuttle. These were designed for emergency scenarios, so they need to modify them to make them suitable for longer EVAs.

http://www.gizmag.com/orion-space-suit/30130/

The actual suits will probably be white instead of orange due to thermal requirements. The high-visibility orange was in case the astronauts had to bail out over the ocean, which isn't a contingency mode in Orion.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Nibb31