NASA Selects Supplier for Next Generation Moon Suits

You might recall a story from just three months ago that NASA had chosen two companies to develop the next generation space suits they've been trying to develop since 2007.  The two selected were Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace.  This downselection to two was the last step of a competition for the suit contract; Blue Origin, Honeywell Aerospace, Leidos, Sierra Space, and SpaceX were among the other companies originally involved with the competition, which at one point numbered 40 companies.

NASA announced today that the Axiom Space will manufacture the suits for the Artemis 3 moon landing mission, currently very roughly scheduled for '25 or '26.  It's expected that the design will be used for future missions.

"NASA is proud to partner with commercial industry on this historic mission that will kickstart the United States building a lasting presence on the surface of the moon," Lara Kearney, manager of NASA's Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility program, said in a statement (opens in new tab). 

"What we learn on Artemis 3 and future missions on and around the moon will pave the way for missions to Mars," Kearney added. "Spacesuits enable us to literally take that next step."

The wording of the article there on Space.Com doesn't say that Axiom has the sole-source position for all NASA suits for some number of years, but it doesn't say Collins Aerospace has lost and won't be in the running for future contracts.  It simply says:

In June of this year, NASA announced that it had selected Axiom and a team led by Collins Aerospace to develop and build spacesuits for future missions to the moon and the International Space Station. The two private teams earned the right to compete for a total of up to $3.5 billion through 2034.

That money will be doled out via a series of "task orders." The newly announced Artemis 3 award is one such order, and it has a base value of $228.5 million.  [Note: Bold added - SiG]

To me, that bolded sentence implies that each suit "task order" could be an open competition between the two. The reference to suits for the ISS doesn't say when those would be required, but it's probably "soon" since the station is not expected to be around more than another ten years at best. 

xEMU conceptual artwork  NASA illustration.  This is a conceptual design and the final suits probably won't look exactly like these.