NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Welcome to the NASA Education Spacesuits and Spacewalks Web site.

Engage your students in the wonders of space as they learn about spacesuits and spacewalks.

Things you can do with this site:
--Check out the Clickable Spacesuit and learn about the different parts of a spacesuit.
--Take a look at videos about the spacesuits of the future.
--Watch Brain Bites videos and learn about hard-to-do moves in a spacesuit.
--Take a step back in time and visit the Spacesuit History Gallery.
--Explore the Educational Activities.
--Read about spacesuit designers and engineers who create and test spacesuits.
--Discover other NASA Web sites with information about spacesuits and spacewalks.

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Joseph Acaba (left) and Richard Arnold made their first spaceflights on STS-119. Image Credit: NASA

Two educators who are now fully trained NASA astronauts made their first journey into orbit on one of space shuttle Discovery's missions to the International Space Station. During the STS-119 mission, Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold stepped outside the station to conduct critical spacewalking tasks. Acaba taught at Melbourne High School and Dunnellon Middle School in Florida. Arnold taught science and mathematics at several schools in the U.S. and overseas, including John Hanson Middle School in Waldorf, Md.

Discovery launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 15, 2009. The shuttle delivered the space station's fourth and final set of solar arrays, thus completing the complex's backbone, or truss.

Learn more about STS-119
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Learn more about Joseph Acaba
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>  Read interview

Learn more about Richard Arnold
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>  Read interview

Learn about spacesuits with this interactive feature. Image Credit: NASA

NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU, is like a personal mini-spacecraft. Mouse over the parts of the spacesuit and learn why each piece is important.


>  View The Clickable Spacesuit

Astronauts practice installing the Wide Field Camera 3 while divers and engineers observe. This full-scale model is a mock-up of the Hubble Space Telescope submerged in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab Facility in Houston, Texas. Image Credit: NASA

The mission to Hubble required the STS-125 astronaut crew to prepare for and perform five back-to-back spacewalks, also known as extravehicular activities, or EVAs. Video clips and activities explain how the spacewalks were skillfully choreographed to meet time requirements and how the Hubble repair procedures were practiced in "Earth-normal" and simulated "space-normal" environments. The repairs will extend the life of the telescope until 2020. The success of the mission depended on the spacesuits, tools, and skills used to repair Hubble, and on the people at NASA who made it happen.

Visit the education resource site "The Hubble Space Telescope Inspires Wonder" for more information.
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The view outside the space station includes the docked shuttle and Earth below. Image Credit: NASA IT

Imagine the thrill of floating out of the International Space Station and into the emptiness of space. Picture the amazing view of peering past the airlock to see the docked space shuttle and, beyond that, the blues and greens of Earth. What would it be like to move along the metal structure of the space station, on the way to work on the orbiting science laboratory?

Only a select handful of people will ever experience those things and see those sights. But NASA's new Station Spacewalk Game offers the next best thing. In this online video game, players take on the role of spacewalking astronauts. They are tasked with working to continue assembly of the International Space Station. The game is based on real work NASA astronauts performed on shuttle missions.

>  Station Spacewalk Game

This animation shows the space shuttle capture of the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: DigitalSpace Corporation

The STS-125 mission returned the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttle Discovery launched Hubble in 1990 and released it into an orbit 304 nautical miles above Earth. Since then, it has circled Earth more than 100,000 times and provided more than 4,000 astronomers with access to the stars that would not have been possible from inside Earth's atmosphere. Hubble has helped answer some of science's key questions and has provided images that have awed and inspired the world. This 3-D simulation is an interactive animation of several spacewalks planned for this mission.

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