What on Earth Do You Wear on the Moon?

The answer, of course, is a spacesuit. But that almost sounds like some-thing you could buy “off the rack.” During the Apollo era of manned space flight, brought to life in the Smithsonian exhibit Suited for Space, each suit was painstakingly custom-made for individual astronauts. And there were significant variations in the pressure suits made for the early Apollo missions and those worn for walking on the moon.

But both types of suits would not have been possible—which is to say the moon missions themselves would not have been possible—without a whole range of materials created by DuPont.

Apollo 9

While DuPont products were integral in spacesuits throughout the Apollo program, they had particular importance in Apollo 9, as this earth-orbit mission was the first in the program to have “extra-vehicular activities,” commonly known as “spacewalks.”

• Astronauts wore pressure suits with an outer layer of fiberglass yarns coated with DuPont Teflon® TFE fluorocarbon.

• Seven of the 12 insulating layers in the suits were made with DuPont Kapton® polyimide film.

• Aluminized Kapton® also provided thermal insulation in the suits worn by astronauts Russel Schweickart and David Scott when they conducted hour-long spacewalks.

• Two strength layers of the bulky garment were made of DuPont Nomex® nylon.

Apollo 9 Astronaut Russell Schweickart, lunar module pilot, stands on the module’s deck during his spacewalk on the fourth day of the Apollo 9 mission.

Image Credit: NASA/James McDivitt

Apollo 11

The moon takes 27 days to rotate once on its axis. So any place on the surface of the Moon experiences about 13 days of sunlight, followed by 13 days of darkness. If you stand on the surface of the Moon in sunlight, the temperature is hot enough to boil water. And when the sun goes down the temperature drops 250 degrees in just a matter of moments. In an environment this extreme, the suits worn for the first, and subsequent, Apollo lunar landings had to be marvels of science and engineering.

• The moon suits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had 21 layers.

• Twenty of those layers either contained or were made entirely of products manufactured by DuPont.

• Nylon provided strength for restraint layers.

• Neoprene coated nylon was used as bladder material and ripstop.

• DuPont polyester fiber was used as spacer material between layers of aluminized Mylar® polyester film which provided thermal protection.

• Additional thermal insulation was supplied by aluminized Kapton® polyimide film, which retains its integrity at temperatures ranging from minus 269 degrees Celsius to plus 400 degrees Celsius.

• The outer layer of the moon suit was formed of fiberglass yarns coated with Teflon® TFE fluorocarbon. This outer layer provided critical protection against the micrometeoroids that continually bombard the moon’s surface.

• Up to 50 percent of the surface was also covered with fabric of Teflon® yarn to provide abrasion protection.

• Nomex® fibers provided an inner protective layer.

• The lunar boot worn by Armstrong and Aldrin had a tongue coated with Teflon® fiberglass cloth. The boot inner layers were made of the same material, along with 25 layers of Kapton® film.

Flight Suits

For earth orbit, lunar orbit and lunar landing missions during the Apollo program, the astronauts needed protective yet comfortable gear when pressure suits were not necessary.

• In-flight white coveralls were made entirely of Teflon® fiber.

• To enable the astronauts to position themselves in their weightless flight environment, TFE monofilament was used in a Velcro patch on the soles of their footwear.

This is an image of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission.

Photo Credit: NASA

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