Engineers and trainers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have been preparing NASA astronauts for the extravehicular activities, EVAs or spacewalks, that they will need to perform during the future Artemis lunar landings. I was drawn to this story after seeing this really cool photo while I was doomscrolling Twitter. 

Basically, engineers want to know how easy it is to use the new spacesuit being developed for the missions and what tools the astronauts may need on the surface of the Moon. Astronauts have other methods of trying out things, but trying to move around in a spacesuit in low gravity and do tasks is a different matter. There’s nothing like the real thing, or as close to the real thing as we can get on Earth.

The EVA preparations have been going on since at least September 2020 and have consisted of building a simulated lunar surface at the bottom of a special pool known as the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. The latest phase of the training is practicing for an EVA at the lunar south pole where it is permanently shadowed. Artemis 4, which will land no earlier than 2024, will target this area. 

This is different from the EVAs done during the Apollo missions, which were closer to the lunar equator and better lit. In order to simulate the lighting conditions at the lunar south pole, they turned off all the lights in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. 

I’m not sure I’d want to do an EVA in almost complete darkness.

More Information

NASA press release