As far as Mars, anyway.

The Astronaut's New Clothes

- by Harald Franzen

A lonely figure in a bulky space suit walks slowly across a giant meteorite impact crater. The rocky desert landscape appears cold, dry and hostile—not unlike Mars. In fact, the man is testing the space suit astronauts might wear if they ever go to the Red Planet.

The scene is Devon Island in the Canadian high arctic, a place about as close to the desolate setting of Mars as you can get on Earth. The 20-kilometer-wide Haughton Crater on Devon Island, the result of a meteorite impact about 23 million years ago, is the only such impact crater known to lie in a polar desert environment, which makes it the ideal testing ground for Mars mission space suits. NASA has no immediate plans to send a man or woman to the Red Planet. But several companies have been working on a space suit for Mars.

"A prototype would be an exaggeration," says Ed Hodgson, Preliminary Design Engineer at Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International. "We have been working on concepts for space suits for a Mars mission with the recognition that the challenge is a big one and we need all the lead time we can get." ILC Dover, a subsidiary of Hamilton Sundstrand, makes the suits that shuttle astronauts use during space walks. Their concept suit is called the I-suit. David Clark Company, which makes the orange suits that shuttle astronauts wear during takeoff, has also built a Mars concept suit, the D-suit. And the NASA Johnson Space Center created a third, the H-suit, using from components from outside companies....