NASA’s leadership and Axiom have reacted to a warning from the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the agency’s ambitious plan to field next-generation spacesuits for lunar landings and International Space Station (ISS) spacewalks is significantly behind schedule.
The report, titled “NASA’s Acquisition of Next-Generation Spacesuit Services”, details how developmental delays, a risky acquisition strategy, and the early exit of one key contractor have left NASA reliant on a single provider—potentially threatening the 2028 Artemis lunar landing and continued ISS operations ahead of the station’s planned 2030 decommissioning.
Spacesuits have been essential to human space exploration since the earliest crewed missions.
During Project Mercury in the early 1960s, NASA developed basic pressure suits for short orbital flights. The Gemini program advanced the technology, enabling the first U.S. spacewalks with improved mobility and life support systems.
The pinnacle came with the Apollo missions, where the iconic A7L suits—built by International Latex Corporation (ILC Dover)—allowed astronauts to walk on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, protecting them from the Moon’s extreme temperatures, vacuum, and abrasive regolith.
After Apollo, focus shifted to Earth orbit. The Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), introduced in the early 1980s for the Space Shuttle, became the primary spacesuit for International Space Station operations.
Now more than four decades old in its core design, the aging EMU has encountered recurring issues such as water intrusion in helmets and parts obsolescence.
For over a decade, NASA has worked toward next-generation suits capable of supporting longer lunar surface operations and more reliable ISS spacewalks.
NASA mission patches
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In-house development efforts under earlier programs faced delays, leading the agency to award commercial xEVAS contracts in 2022 to foster innovation and competition.
The report opens with a stark summary of the stakes: “NASA faces challenges in ensuring next-generation spacesuits are available to meet the Agency’s current schedules for the Artemis lunar landing mission in 2028 and prior to the ISS’s decommissioning in 2030.”
NASA’s original timelines called for lunar suit demonstrations in November 2025 and microgravity suit demonstrations on the ISS by April 2026. Those dates have already slipped by more than a year and a half. As of January 2026, the sole remaining provider, Axiom Space, is targeting late-2027 demonstrations for both suit types.
Even that accelerated schedule leaves virtually no margin for the Artemis or the final years of ISS operations. The OIG’s analysis goes further, projecting even longer delays based on historical NASA program data.
“Specifically, we determined the initial development schedules for both spacesuits—spanning 3.4 years for lunar suits and 3.8 years for microgravity suits—were less than half of the 8.7 year-historical average of time it takes from contract award to test flight for recent space flight programs,” the report states.
“If Axiom experiences design and testing delays in line with this historical average, the lunar and microgravity spacesuit demonstrations would not occur until 2031.”
Such a timeline would leave almost no overlap with the ISS’s remaining life and push critical lunar capability three years past the current Artemis landing target. At the heart of the problem, according to the OIG, is NASA’s choice of acquisition strategy.
In May 2022, the agency awarded indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace. The combined maximum value of the contracts is $3.1 billion.
Rather than purchasing and owning the suits outright, NASA opted for a firm-fixed-price, service-based model in which it would essentially “rent” spacewalking services from commercial providers after initial demonstrations.
The first task orders were substantial: Axiom received a $228 million order in September 2022 for lunar suit development, while Collins was awarded a $97 million sole-source task order in December 2022 for its microgravity suit. The OIG argues this approach was fundamentally mismatched to the task.
“NASA’s choice to use a firm-fixed-price, service-based acquisition strategy for xEVAS aligns with the Agency’s strategic decision to shift the risk of cost overruns to the contractor… However, in this case, the firm-fixed-price contract approach conflicted with the developmental nature of next-generation spacesuits, which carry higher levels of technical, financial, and schedule risk.”
A fully operational spacesuit had not been designed, developed, and produced for NASA since the 1970s, the report notes, underscoring the novel technical challenges involved nearly half a century later.
Compounding the issue was NASA’s requirement that bidders develop both lunar and microgravity suits. The agency believed commonalities in human-factors requirements justified dual-capable suits and would foster redundancy.
In practice, the demand “constrained an already limited pool of potential offerors in an already constrained market.”
Only two bids were received: one from Collins, the long-time maintainer of NASA’s existing Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) suits, and one from Axiom, which had no prior spacesuit development experience.
The report notes that Collins had documented management and performance problems on its EMU maintenance contract, yet NASA rated its past performance as “Excellent” during source selection.
Once contracts were awarded, NASA took aggressive steps to preserve competition and redundancy. It issued a sole-source task order to Collins to meet guaranteed minimums, approved partial milestone payments to both companies when they fell short of full deliverables, and awarded $5 million “cross-over” task orders in mid-2023, allowing each firm to work on both suit types.
These actions were intended to keep both providers viable and capable of backing each other up.
The strategy ultimately failed. Less than two years after the award, in June 2024, NASA and Collins mutually agreed to descope the company’s task orders. Collins had missed its Preliminary Design Review milestone by a full year and could not meet the ISS demonstration schedule.
By the time of descope, NASA had paid Collins $37 million—less than the original guaranteed minimum—with the remaining funds redirected to Axiom.
Collins retains the underlying IDIQ contract at no cost and could theoretically re-enter competition later, but for now, NASA is left with a single provider. “Collins’ descope from xEVAS negated the competition and redundancy sought by the Agency, leaving NASA with only one xEVAS spacesuit provider,” the OIG concluded.
With Axiom as the sole path forward, NASA has ramped up risk-mitigation efforts. The agency is actively monitoring supply-chain vulnerabilities, increasing in-house testing at Johnson Space Center facilities (including a more than 100% increase in pressurized test time in recent months), and providing extensive technical collaboration.
Axiom has leveraged NASA’s earlier xEMU designs and formed partnerships with companies such as Prada, Nokia, and Oakley. Additional government funding has supported long-lead items like oxygen regulators ($13.1 million contract) and materials for pressure vessels.
Despite these steps, the OIG notes that significant testing and qualification work remain, and further technical challenges are likely.
In response to the OIG report, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman voiced appreciation and outlined the agency’s proactive stance.
“Very much appreciate the OIG work,” he posted on X. “As I posted months ago, NASA is not taking a passive role in any component of America’s return to the lunar surface and building a Moon base. We are reviewing where NASA can do better, how we can provide relief where appropriate to burdensome requirements, where we can expand capabilities over time (Apollo 11’s EVA profile was very different than Apollo 17), and where we can help industry by inserting NASA SMEs and driving the intended outcomes.
“I am confident that when NASA is ready to land on the Moon in 2028, our astronauts will be wearing Axiom suits.”
Isaacman also echoed some of the report’s concerns about acquisition strategy: “There will always be lessons learned as we improve across NASA and industry, and we need to be mindful of the contracting approach to stimulate a market versus jumping to an as-a-service model where NASA may be the only customer for the foreseeable future.
That places a significant capital burden on providers while they wait for additional demand to materialize. A successful approach for commercial crew and cargo, underpinned by launch, does not mean it is applicable to every space-related service. The orbital and lunar economy is inevitable. We just need to be thoughtful in our approach to sustainably enable it.”
Looking ahead, the report identifies potential for renewed competition. The xEVAS contracts include an “on-ramp” clause allowing other companies to propose services through May 2032.
Several firms are already developing relevant technologies: Genesis Engineering Solutions is working on a Single Person Spacecraft concept; ILC Dover is advancing a flexible Astro pressure garment; and SpaceX has demonstrated an EVA suit during the Polaris Dawn mission.
However, NASA officials told auditors that adding a new provider now would not accelerate near-term ISS or Artemis timelines, as any newcomer would still need to complete its own demonstrations.
Axiom also acknowledged the OIG report, claiming it can make the required timeline.
“Axiom Space is delivering the most advanced spacesuit ever built for human lunar exploration — and we’re doing it with the urgency the Artemis campaign demands. To date, we’ve logged more than 950 hours of crewed pressurized testing, completed the first thermal vacuum test of… https://t.co/G7sD5kmKlL
— Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) April 21, 2026
To address longer-term vulnerabilities, the OIG made two formal recommendations to the Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate: “Seek industry input on current xEVAS contract requirements to maintain competition as needed in the future. Develop a plan to establish interoperability standards between Artemis lunar vehicles and spacesuits.”
NASA management concurred with both recommendations and described planned actions, including further industry outreach via Requests for Information and ongoing work to ensure suit compatibility with lunar landers such as Blue Moon. The OIG deemed the responses responsive and considers the recommendations resolved pending verification of corrective actions.
The report arrives against the backdrop of NASA’s broader push toward commercial partnerships. By choosing a service-based model, the agency hoped to replicate successes seen in Commercial Crew and Human Landing System programs while fostering a commercial spacesuit market that did not previously exist. Yet the OIG cautions that applying firm-fixed-price terms to highly developmental hardware introduced avoidable risks.
“In our judgment, while firm-fixed-price and service-based contracts can be viable options for certain NASA procurements, applying that approach to a developmental effort like xEVAS introduced its own set of risks to achieving NASA’s goals.”For astronauts, engineers, and program managers, the implications are concrete.
Legacy EMU suits have experienced recurring safety issues, while next-generation suits promise enhanced mobility, better environmental protection, and improved life support—capabilities essential for long-duration lunar surface operations and reliable ISS spacewalks.
Delays could force continued reliance on aging hardware or require schedule slips that ripple through the entire Artemis architecture.
The OIG’s findings echo prior audits dating back to 2017 and 2021 that highlighted persistent problems in NASA’s spacesuit development efforts.
NASA now faces a narrow window to stabilize Axiom’s progress, incorporate lessons from Collins’ exit, and position the agency for future competition.
Whether the 2028 lunar landing and pre-2030 ISS transition can still be achieved on schedule will depend heavily on Axiom’s ability to navigate remaining technical hurdles—and on NASA’s willingness to apply the OIG’s hard-earned recommendations before the next set of milestones slips further.
(Lead image: OIG report video).
