NASA’s Next-Generation Spacesuit Acquisition: A Cautionary Case in Fixed-Price Development Risk

The NASA Office of Inspector General’s April 2026 report, NASA’s Acquisition of Next-Generation Spacesuit Services, examines NASA’s effort to obtain new spacesuits for International Space Station operations and the Artemis lunar campaign. The report was issued by Robert H. Steinau, NASA OIG Senior Official, with major contributions from Deanna Lee, Susan Bachle, Tyler Martin, Dimitra Tsamis, Rachel Pierre, Amy Bannister, Lauren Suls, and Shani Dennis.

The report addresses a mission-critical problem: NASA’s current Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuits were designed more than 50 years ago, were first used during the Space Shuttle era, and have not undergone a major redesign in roughly two decades. The OIG notes that these suits have experienced design and safety concerns, including helmet water intrusion, thermal regulation problems, and astronaut injuries. NASA intends to continue using them until the ISS is decommissioned in 2030 or until next-generation spacesuits become available.

NASA’s Artemis campaign adds a second, more demanding requirement. Lunar exploration requires suits that can support surface mobility, withstand abrasive dust, operate across extreme temperatures, and interface with lunar vehicles and assets. Unlike microgravity spacewalks outside the ISS, lunar exploration requires astronauts to walk, kneel, collect samples, operate tools, and interact with systems such as the Human Landing System and future lunar rovers.

After multiple earlier efforts failed to produce a flight-ready replacement suit, NASA changed its acquisition strategy. In May 2022, the agency awarded Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services, or xEVAS, contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. These contracts were structured as firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, milestone-based, service contracts with a current combined maximum value of $3.1 billion. Rather than owning the suits in the traditional sense, NASA would purchase spacewalking services—essentially renting the spacesuits after provider demonstrations.

The OIG found that NASA’s strategy reflected legitimate policy goals, including shifting cost-overrun risk to contractors and encouraging a commercial space economy. However, the report concludes that this approach was not well aligned with the developmental nature of next-generation spacesuits. The OIG emphasized that there was no mature commercial spacesuit market when NASA adopted the service model, and that requiring offerors to bid on both lunar and microgravity suits constrained an already limited supplier base.

Schedule risk is the report’s central concern. NASA’s original plans to demonstrate lunar and microgravity suits in 2025 and 2026 proved overly optimistic, with both efforts delayed by at least a year and a half. The OIG further concluded that, if Axiom experiences design and testing delays consistent with historical averages for recent spaceflight programs, Artemis and ISS demonstrations may not occur until 2031. That outcome would threaten NASA’s ability to support both the planned Artemis lunar surface mission and ISS needs before decommissioning.

NASA also lost the competition and redundancy it sought when Collins’ xEVAS task orders were descoped in 2024 after the company could not meet the agreed schedule. NASA is now dependent on Axiom as its single active provider, while taking mitigation actions such as expanded testing, supply-chain monitoring, and additional government collaboration.

The OIG made two recommendations: NASA should seek industry input on current xEVAS requirements to preserve future competition, and develop a plan to establish interoperability standards between Artemis lunar vehicles and spacesuits. NASA concurred with both recommendations.

The broader lesson is that fixed-price, service-based acquisition can be valuable, but it is not inherently suitable for every developmental program. Where technical uncertainty is high, supplier capacity is thin, and mission dependency is acute, acquisition strategy must be matched carefully to market maturity, engineering risk, and operational necessity.

Disclaimer:
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, procurement, engineering, aerospace, or government contracts advice. Readers should review the full NASA OIG report and applicable acquisition requirements before relying on any conclusions.