NASA turns to a stripped-down Sortie Suit for the first Artemis landings

NASA has instructed Axiom Space to produce a stripped-down “Sortie Suit” for the first Artemis lunar landings, reducing mass, complexity, and certification duration to meet a 2028 target and to interface with SpaceX and Blue Origin landers. The redesign eliminates the original over-burdensome requirements—six EVAs over 6.5 days, 210-day dormancy, and two-hour exposure in permanently shadowed regions—after the Lunar Gateway was cancelled, leaving Europe without a guaranteed astronaut slot on the missions.