Roadmap to Develop Design Requirements for Mechanical Counter-Pressure Martian Exploration Spacesuits

As long-duration Martian missions are in the initial stages of planning, the development of spacesuits that facilitate surface exploration is imperative for mission success. A crewed mission to Mars presents unique environmental, operational, and mission-specific conditions, which makes designing a robust extravehicular activity spacesuit challenging. Progress in the development of novel spacesuit architectures incorporating mechanical counter-pressure has stalled due to a lack of informed design requirements. In this paper, a synthesis is conducted for three critical technologies: surface exploration thermal systems, pressure garment fabrication, and on-body pressure measurement systems. The synthesis focuses on alternative spacesuit concepts and methods to define system-level design requirements to guide future spacesuit development. From the evaluation of each technology gap, recommendations for how to address gaps in future work are determined through a design roadmap. Additionally, operational considerations will be incorporated to allow engineers to focus on the limitations or benefits of alternative spacesuit architectures in addressing the challenges of Martian surface exploration during the development process. The proposed roadmap incorporates critical design components and methodologies to progress mechanical counter-pressure spacesuit design and develop design requirements.