Development Roadmap
Prioritised from 70 years of operational and failure data. Engineering planning, not marketing.
Hand fatigue, contact injury, cold-object handling and sizing remain the most persistent mission limiter across every program on record.
Digital fit library; instrumented torque testing; TMG swap simplification
Active assistance / smart restraint concepts; improved maintainability
EVA-23 (2013) demonstrated contamination sensitivity is life-critical, not a nuisance. Separator blockage allowed free water into Parmitano's helmet.
Redesign separator; add free-water detection; emergency helmet management
Modular contamination-tolerant water processing; easier on-orbit maintenance
xEMU failure demonstrated exploration suit feasibility can collapse on mass allocation alone, not hardware performance.
Lock mass budgets at subsystem level before elaboration; live allocation model
Aging Enhanced EMU fleet showed industrial-base fragility can become mission risk independent of hardware condition. OIG 2025 critical flag.
Map critical parts, alternate suppliers, refurbishment bottlenecks
Digital lifecycle traceability with predictive maintenance metrics