While the world’s attention remains fixed on Artemis II and the crew that just returned from a lunar mission, the next chapter of the Moon program is quietly taking shape inside clean rooms in Houston.

Axiom Space confirmed to Talk of Titusville on March 31 that it has entered production on the first Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the spacesuit that will carry astronauts back to the lunar surface on Artemis III.

“We are in the middle of our CDR, our Critical Design Review,” said Tammy Radford, Axiom’s xEVAS Program Manager. “We’ve delivered a lot of technical products to NASA, and we are starting our Class 1 production now.” Parts for the Qualification test suit are being fabricated and Axiom Space is headed towards that phase.

From Paper to Metal

The AxEMU has been on a long and sometimes rocky road. NASA awarded Axiom Space the initial task order in September 2022, valued at $228.5 million. That decision followed a bruising 2021 Inspector General report that found NASA had spent more than $420 million over a decade on next-generation spacesuit development with limited results. Enter two companies that were selected to provide Spacesuits-As-A-Service: Axiom and Collins Aerospace.

Collins would drop out in June 2024 and cancel their contract with NASA, but Axiom stayed the course and continued its development efforts. That work is paying off now as the company enters the latter phases of AxEmu’s development.

Initial Prototypes And A Connection With High Fashion

Axiom unveiled a prototype at Space Center Houston in March 2023, though it was hidden under a dark cover layer designed by Esther Marquis from Apple TV’s “For All Mankind.” The real outer layer — white for thermal protection — was revealed later, when Axiom and Italian fashion house Prada unveiled the flight design at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan in October 2024.

In the time since, development has moved quickly. Axiom completed its preliminary design review and entered the critical design review phase. In November 2025, Axiom and KBR completed the first uncrewed thermal vacuum test of the suit’s pressure garment at KBR’s Aerospace Environment Protection Laboratory in San Antonio, the same facility where Apollo astronauts once trained for their Moon missions.

By February 2026, NASA announced that Axiom had passed a contractor-led technical review and that the agency would conduct its own critical design sync review. The agency also confirmed that parts for the first flight unit had begun arriving and that more than 850 hours of crewed pressurized testing had been completed.

One Suit, Many Missions

One of the AxEMU’s most practical design choices is its single architecture. In the interview, Ms. Radford confirmed that the suit worn on the Moon is effectively the same suit that can be used aboard the International Space Station or Axiom’s planned commercial station.

“We have a single suit architecture,” she said. “The only difference would be the boots. We would swap out walking boots for LEO boots. Otherwise, it’s the same spacesuit.”

That kind of modularity has real implications for cost and logistics. NASA’s current ISS spacewalk suits, which were designed in the 1970s for the Space Shuttle program, have been in use for decades. Collins Aerospace had been developing a replacement under the same xEVAS contract umbrella, but halted that effort in 2024, leaving Axiom as the sole contractor with a viable path forward.

Whether the AxEMU will fly to the ISS before the Moon remains an open question. “Those details are being worked out with NASA, and they will roll that mission out to us,” Radford said.

One mission we do know of is Artemis III, slated for next year, and NASA has said that they hope AxEMU gets its first crewed flight test, and used inside/around the HLS lander during rendezvous and docking operations. That’s no moonwalk, not yet, but it is a real off-world test of the new hardware.

Built for Everyone

The old EMU suits were a persistent source of frustration aboard the ISS, particularly for smaller-framed astronauts. A planned all-female spacewalk in 2019 had to be reconfigured because a second medium-sized torso component wasn’t available in time. The issue highlighted a decades-old gap in suit sizing that limited who could effectively work outside the station.

The AxEMU addresses that directly. Axiom says the suit accommodates the 1st through 99th percentile of the U.S. population using a modular sizing system — think small, medium, and large components for the arms, legs, and hard upper torso that can be mixed and matched. Micro-sizing adjustments allow further fine-tuning of limb lengths.

“It’s as close to a custom suit fitting as you’re going to get without actually being a custom suit,” Radford said, adding that she had personally served as a test subject and confirmed that the smaller sizes perform well.

All three of Axiom’s astronauts — including former JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, and Michael López-Alegría — have worn the suit during testing.

Designed for the Lunar South Pole

The AxEMU isn’t just an upgrade — it’s a fundamentally different engineering challenge from the Apollo-era suits that walked on the Moon’s equator. The Artemis III landing site near the lunar south pole presents temperature extremes that range from around 250°F in direct sunlight to roughly -330°F in permanently shadowed regions. The sun sits low on the horizon, creating harsh lighting conditions and long shadows.

To handle the thermal challenge, the suit’s outer layer, developed in partnership with Prada, uses advanced materials and stitching techniques to reflect solar radiation and keep lunar dust from penetrating interior layers. The helmet features an Oakley-designed visor system with high-definition optics and a 24-karat gold coating to filter harmful wavelengths. It’s a space suit that looks good, and looks as if it were made for the 21st century — because it was.

Inside the suit, a portable life support system provides oxygen, scrubs carbon dioxide through a regenerable system, and manages cooling. Axiom says the PLSS supports EVAs of up to eight hours. Redundant life support loops provide backup if a primary system encounters problems. That’s a significant safety improvement over earlier designs.

“We are able to include some redundant life support components, so if we have a failure or an issue with one, we have backup loops to accommodate that,” Radford said.

Testing, Testing

The AxEMU has been through an extensive ground testing campaign. In addition to the San Antonio thermal vacuum work with KBR, Axiom has been running crewed tests at NASA Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory — the massive 40-foot-deep pool where astronauts simulate spacewalks in simulated lunar gravity.

Dual-suit runs in the NBL have been completed, and teams have performed emergency rescue drills, simulated geology sampling, and tested the suit at various elevated pressure levels. NASA crew members and spacesuit engineers have provided feedback on design, mobility, and safety.

Overall, somewhere around 700–850+ hours of crewed pressurized testing have accumulated by early 2026, with more work ongoing.

This includes a range of ground simulations to build operational confidence. Astronaut Walter Villadei conducted field tests with lunar geology tools in 2025, during which time was spent assessing dexterity, range of motion, glove functionality, and tool handling for lunar surface tasks such as sample collection.

Testing has also taken place at NASA’s ARGOS facility, which uses an overhead crane system to offload body weight and simulate reduced gravity, and in Axiom’s own suit test lab in Houston.

Will The AxEMU Be Ready?

Asked directly about whether the AxEMU will be ready in time, Axiom’s Tammy Radford was unequivocal and straightforward: “We’re going to be ready for the Artemis mission.”

Artemis III is currently targeting a mid-2027 launch, though that date depends on a chain of milestones that extends well beyond the spacesuit, including SpaceX’s Starship HLS lander and NASA’s own launch vehicle readiness. The AxEMU appears to be moving toward delivery.

Pressed on whether the schedule is behind or on track, Radford simply repeated herself: “We’re going to be ready for the Artemis mission.”

With CDR underway and Class 1 production now started, the next major milestone will be Qualification Testing. In that phase, components and the integrated system face simulated lunar conditions, followed by final certification and delivery to NASA.

It’s been more than 50 years since a spacesuit walked on the Moon. When the next one does, it will be an AxEMU. A lot of things needs to happen between now and 2028 for that to happen, but Axiom Space are making it sound like they are on track and will be ready for lunar duty.