Boeing’s New Spacesuit Design With Smartphone-Friendly Gloves

Whenever the word astronaut comes into people's head, the image of a person wearing a big spacesuit with a bowl-shaped helmet comes floating by. However, the heavy design and the weight of the suit restricts the mobility and response of the astronauts in case of emergency. To overcome this discrepancy, Boeing has recently launched a new spacesuit design, which is about 60 percent lighter than the previously used ones and has more advanced features.

The heavy bowl-shaped helmet is replaced with a more comfortable nylon hoodie embedded with communication systems. Additionally, the gloves are modified to be compatible with touch screen panels, smartphones and tablets.

The new spacesuits are trendy blue in color and are referred to as "Boeing Blue" suits. They are meant specifically for the upcoming Starliner Space Taxi program, which will be launched in 2018, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Eric Boe, as an astronaut, gave his opinion of the new spacesuits by saying, "The most important part is that the suit will keep you alive." The new design "is a lot lighter, more form-fitting and it's simpler, which is always a good thing. Complicated systems have more ways they can break, so simple is better on something like this."

The Starliner Space Taxi that is intended to send and bring people to and from the International Space Station (ISS) is meant to break the foreign dependence in shuttling American astronauts. After the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in the year 2011, America has been using Russian Soyuz capsules. Since Russia has threatened to stop aiding in shuttling American astronauts by its space capsules, NASA has initiated contracts with Boeing and SpaceX companies to develop the requisite technology and capsules that will help it in sending astronauts to the ISS in the low-Earth orbit.

The CST-Starliner is currently being built for NASA's Commercial Crew program. It will be launched with the help of Atlas V rocket, developed by the United Launch Alliance. Also, it is expected that the astronauts will be able to reach the ISS in less than 24 hours, The Verge reported.

Christopher Ferguson, former Space Shuttle astronaut and a Boeing employee now, said that, "If we launch, even on the right day, we may not even have to go to sleep."

In this period of travel, there is no scope for bathroom break so the suit must be worn with adult diapers.