Back in 2023, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons outed themselves as HR Giger stans, including a nod to Alien’s Xenomorphs in their SS24 Prada men’s collection. Now, Prada is headed back to space, but for real this time.
In case it slipped your mind, the Italian fashion house announced it landed a contract to design NASA’s new spacesuits – alongside space infrastructure developer Axiom Space – in October last year. Now, it’s finally unveiled the spacesuits themselves, which are set to be worn during mankind’s first return to the moon since 1972, as early as September 2026.
This also means that the Prada astronaut outfits are set to be worn by the first female astronaut, and first person of colour, to step foot on the moon. Unfortunately, they won’t go bearing the actual Prada logo alongside the usual US flag, but the white suit is emblazoned with red stripes, in what’s surely a nod to the label’s Linnea Rossa line.
On a more practical note, the spacesuits are built to “withstand extreme temperatures at the lunar south pole,” according to a press release. They will enable moonwalkers to endure the freezing temperatures in the permanently shadowed regions of the moon for at least two hours, and elsewhere astronauts will be able to prance about in low gravity for up to eight hours.
NASA intends to return human beings to the moon as part of its ongoing Artemis project. In 2022, it launched Artemis 1, an uncrewed flight around the moon and back. Artemis 2, scheduled for September 2025 or later, will do the same with a crew of four astronauts. Artemis 3, which will take place no sooner than September 2026, is the big one: a crewed surface landing, which will see two crew members spend almost a week near the moon’s south pole, conducting scientific research.
Why do we want to go back to the moon? Good question – it’s not just a massive runway for the new Prada collection. In the long term, the space agency intends to establish the first lunar space station, where humans can live, work, and conduct research on a permanent basis. Read more about that mission, and how it could provide a stepping stone for a future Mars colony, here.