Sending humans to Mars is going to cost gazillion dollars and take a long, long time – but when it does happen, we want to be prepared. How? Go to Antarctica in spacesuits and pretend it’s Mars.
NASA teamed up with the University of North Dakota’s Space Suit Laboratory (that’s a business card I’d love to hand out) to make sure the super-advanced, multi-material NDX-1 getups work in harsh conditions. Not exactly Martian, but it’s the best we can do, short of, you know, going there. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper too.
Images courtesy of Pablo de Leon and NASA