Future Use and Proposed Replacement
NASA continues to use the EMU in the wake of the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. When preparing for the Constellation Program, a now-cancelled series of missions to the ISS, Moon, and Mars which was planned to commence in 2015, NASA planned to replace the EMU and the ACES pressure suit with a new Constellation Space Suit system, derived from the ACES suit and the ILC Dover-developed Mark III and I-Suit space suit systems.
The new suit would have been designed, depending upon the configuration, to protect the astronaut during launch, in-flight emergencies, reentry and landing, and both microgravity and lunar EVAs. It was planned to feature common hardware and the modular features used in the ACES and EMU suits.
On June 11, 2008, NASA awarded a contract for Oceaneering International for the development and manufacturing of the new suits, with the David Clark Company and United Space Alliance being two of seven contractors in the new endeavor. Oceaneering beat out the Hamilton Sundstrand/ILC Dover partnership in the manufacturing of the new space suit.
However, on August 15, 2008 NASA press release stated that a compliance issue required the termination of Oceaneering's contract for the Constellation suit for the convenience of the government. Later, NASA announced that effective March 2, 2009 "NASA has awarded an interim letter contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston to begin work on the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system for the Constellation Program. The new contract featured a Hamilton Sundstrand/ILC Dover partnership. The cancellation of the Constellation Program in 2010 leaves the suit's current status uncertain.
Read more about this topic: Extravehicular Mobility Unit
Famous quotes containing the words future use, future, proposed and/or replacement:
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future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met
there who detain’d me for love of me,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I’m a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I’ve always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
“There is no legislation—I care not what it is—tariff, railroads, corporations, or of a general political character, that all equals in importance the putting of our banking and currency system on the sound basis proposed in the National Monetary Commission plan.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)