• Question: how do spacesuits stop people being affected by the space atmosphere?

    Asked by Flo to Maggie, Ry, Scott on 16 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      It has to be like a scuba-divers suit that protects you from radiation as well.
      Unlike underwater the pressure in space is really weak, so in the helmets they have pressurised oxygen. The whole suit needs to be air tight for this reason, so oxygen doesn’t escape and depressurise the suit!
      They also put a ‘candycane’ pattern on the space suits to tell the astronauts apart.
      The original spacesuits had 14 layers between the astronaut and the space! There are three main layers:
      – The liquid cooling part stops the astronaut from overheating
      – The pressure part to retain air pressure in the suit
      – The Thermal micrometeoroid shield part to reflect the sun’s heat and stop small bits of flying space debris tearing into the space suit!
      A lot of engineering went into these. This site has a lot more detail:
      https://www.space.com/21987-how-nasa-spacesuits-work-infographic.html
      Great question!
      Ryan

    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 16 Nov 2017:

      Space doesn’t have an atmosphere. But if you mean the space environment, then I can tell you how dangerous that is!

      In space the temperature changes a lot! In outer space its really cold (about -270 degrees!), but on places like the moon the temperature can get as cold as -170 degrees in the night and 100 degrees in the day! So space suits need to not melt when its really hot, but also keep astronauts warm when its so cold.

      Theres no air to breathe in space, so space suits have to allow us to breathe.

      The pressure is super low in space, this lowers the boiling point of blood so if our space suits weren’t pressurised to Earth’s pressures then our blood would boil and eyes would pop out!

      And lastly, the Sun emits lots of radiation that is bad for us. On Earth, we have the atmosphere to protect us from it but in space we don’t so without spacesuits we would get really sick (its called radiation poisoning!)

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