Astro™ EVA Spacesuit Parabolic Flight Testing Overview

The Astro™ spacesuit is a next-generation pressure garment system (PGS) designed to provide the capability requested by the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) program. The xEVAS contract includes a Crew Capabilities Assessment (CCA), which involves Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) testing to demonstrate system effectiveness and provide risk reduction in xEVAS system design. This assessment included multiple test subjects and the use of a high-fidelity prototype xEVA suit pressure garment system (Astro™), with the objective of analyzing how the design enables a user to complete tasks in representative environments. Most demonstration tasks were capable of being performed in a 1-g environment, but some could only be accomplished in a 0-g (or similar) environment. Three common representative 0-g environments are active gravity offload systems, neutral buoyancy labs, and parabolic flights. Each has its tradeoffs, but parabolic flights provide the closest approximation of perfect weightlessness for brief periods. The Astro™ next-generation spacesuit successfully completed the CCA objectives during 80 total parabolas over two test days on Zero Gravity Corporation’s G-FORCE ONE. This report details the preparation, execution, footage analysis, and results of the 0-g portion of the xEVAS CCA testing.