Dava Newman and the MIT BioSuit™
In our Design History Series we highlight iconic women in design history and their innovative work. The historic contributions of women to design are many, and we aim to increase the awareness of these contributions in order to counteract a general trend of underrepresentation. In this issue we celebrate Dava Newman, an American aerospace engineer, director of the MIT Media Lab, and former NASA deputy director. Newman was instrumental in designing a spacesuit specifically tailored for female astronauts, addressing long-standing issues of ill-fitting suits for women.
Smart Start
Dava Newman, born in Montana in 1964, developed a deep fascination with space exploration and engineering from a young age. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1986, followed by a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1989 and a Ph.D. in aerospace biomedical engineering in 1992. She’s been a professor of aeronautics and astronautics (the science and construction of space vehicles) at MIT since the 90s and became the director of the prestigious MIT Media Lab in 2021. Impressed yet?
The MIT BioSuit™
Throughout her career, Newman has been a trailblazer, developing innovative technologies that advance the field of space exploration. One of her most significant contributions is the development of the MIT BioSuit™, a spacesuit concept designed to revolutionize extravehicular activities (EVAs) for astronauts. Unlike traditional bulky spacesuits, the BioSuit™ acts like a second skin, enhancing mobility and reducing fatigue, offering astronauts greater flexibility during space missions.
In 2019, NASA’s cancellation of the first all-women spacewalk due to ill-fitting spacesuits highlighted a critical issue: the outdated design of spacesuits. NASA’s Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs) dated back to 1978, and their maintenance costs limited the availability of suits, particularly in smaller sizes. This poses significant challenges for smaller astronauts, especially women, affecting their mobility and comfort during space missions. Newman recognized the need for innovation in spacesuit technology to address these limitations and was already leading a research team that was tackling them head-on.
The development of the BioSuit™ represents a collaborative effort involving engineers, designers, textile specialists, and students from various disciplines. By leveraging expertise from diverse fields and incorporating cutting-edge materials and design principles, Newman’s team aims to revolutionize spacesuit technology. The BioSuit™ prototype is a lightweight, stretchy, 3D knit garment that is customized to each astronaut. These “second-skin” spacesuits incorporate small, spring-like coils made from a shape-memory alloy (SMA) that contract in response to heat, essentially shrink-wrapping the garment around the astronaut’s body. Controlling contraction and expansion with heat was a key innovation to solving the problem of how to get in and out of a skintight suit.
The key breakthrough in the design lies in the application of mechanical counterpressure, which directly applies pressure to the skin, eliminating the need for the traditional gas-pressurized suits. Made from elastic and active fabrics and designed to provide the pressure necessary to inhabit space (equivalent to one-third of sea level atmospheric pressure), the suit achieves the same pressurization as traditional spacesuits while enhancing mobility and reducing the overall weight. This approach supports astronauts in the vacuum of space while providing them with unprecedented freedom of movement during planetary exploration.
Newman’s vision for the future of spacesuits aligns with NASA’s goal of maximizing efficiency and mobility for astronauts on long-duration space missions. The suit has been improving steadily since the early 2000s, incorporating more and increasingly sophisticated technology (an accelerometer, gyroscope, and on-board machine learning algorithms, among others), and has been featured in a wide range of international exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art. The latest iteration of the suit was presented at the 2022 Mars conference. Newman’s work represents a significant advancement in spacesuit technology with potential applications for future Mars exploration missions, a particular interest of hers. With continued research and development, these “second-skin” spacesuits could revolutionize space exploration, enabling astronauts to explore distant planets with greater ease and agility. Newman’s life and work exemplify the transformative power of engineering in advancing space exploration and human understanding of the universe.
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