SKIRMISHER

Astronauts bouncing around in space in their bulky gas-pressurized spacesuits are far from what sci-fi authors imagined. But Dava Newman is changing that by putting the sex back in “spacesexsuit.”

Newman, her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students and a local design firm, Trotti and Associates, have been working on the project for about seven years. Their prototypes are not yet ready for space travel, but demonstrate what they’re trying to achieve–a lightweight, skintight suit that will allow astronauts to become truly mobile lunar and Mars explorers.

Newman anticipates that the BioSuit could be ready by the time humans are ready to launch an expedition to Mars, possibly in about 10 years. Current spacesuits could not handle the challenges of such an exploratory mission, Newman says.

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