Prada will take its designs to the next atmospheric level as the Italian fashion house announced its latest partnership with Axiom Space to design spacesuits for astronauts.
This week, the Milan-based luxury brand announced its collaboration with the Texas-based commercial space company to design Nasa’s lunar spacesuits for its 2025 Artemis III mission – the first crewed flight to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Prada’s engineers will work alongside the Axiom Space systems team throughout the design process, as well as develop solutions for materials and design features to protect the astronauts against various challenges from the space and lunar environment, the two companies announced in a joint press statement.
“We are thrilled to partner with Prada on the Axiom extravehicular mobility unit (AxEMU) spacesuit,” said Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini.
“Prada’s technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques and innovative design concepts will bring advanced 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,” he added.
Prada Group’s marketing director, Lorenzo Bertelli, hailed the partnership, calling it a “true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilization.
“We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space. Our decades of experimentation, cutting-edge technology and design knowhow – 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.”
The two companies said that the AxEMU spacesuit will provide astronauts with advanced capabilities for space exploration while offering Nasa commercially developed human systems needed to access, live and work on and around the moon.
“Evolving Nasa’s exploration extravehicular mobility unit (xEMU) spacesuit design, the Axiom Space spacesuits are created to provide increased flexibility, greater protection to withstand the harsh environment, and specialized tools for exploration and scientific opportunities,” the statement said.
Artemis III will be Nasa’s first crewed mission to the lunar south pole and will include the first woman and first person of color to land on the moon. According to Nasa, the astronauts will take pictures and videos of the moon’s surface, survey geology and retrieve various samples from the lunar south pole.
“The information and materials collected by Artemis III astronauts will increase our understanding of the mysterious south pole region, the moon and our solar system,” said Nasa.
