If in the two problems encountered in June, the EMU diving suits are not 100% at the origin of the cancellation of the outings, this highlights a crisis which has been going on for several years already. Indeed, the EMUs come directly from a design dating from the very beginning of the 1980s, and dedicated to work on the American STS shuttles. The units used on the ISS are aging and some of the parts are no longer produced. In the 2000s, then 2010, NASA did have a project to replace them, but the latter, despite hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to research, could not succeed… even though time is running out!
Not only are EMUs not getting any younger, but they are also very expensive to maintain and are unsuitable for NASA’s next challenge, that of the (re)conquest of the moon. Under pressure, the American agency launched a call for tenders in 2021 to entrust the end of the development and production of future diving suits to one of its famous public-private contracts. Collins Aerospace and Axiom Space are awarded the contracts in 2022, for a maximum of $3.5 billion over 12 years.
