Elon Musk reveals new SpaceX spacesuit
The challenge was balancing aesthetics and function, Musk noted
SpaceX has unveiled a sleek white spacesuit for astronauts on its crewed flights coming up next year.
Chief executive Elon Musk made the big reveal via Instagram on Wednesday. He says it's not him in the new suit, rather a SpaceX engineer.
Musk says the new SpaceX suit has been tested on Earth — and works.
SpaceX is developing a crew version of its Dragon cargo capsule for NASA astronauts. Boeing is also working to get U.S. astronauts flying again from home soil. While the SpaceX suits are white, Boeing will have blue spacesuits for its Starliner capsules.
U.S. astronauts last rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2011. They've since been riding Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station which costs NASA roughly $80 million per seat.
In 2014, NASA signed a contract with SpaceX and Boeing to once again launch astronauts from U.S. soil at a cost of $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion respectively.