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 will be making their first spaceflights on STS-119. Image Credit: NASA

Two educators who are now fully trained NASA astronauts will make their first journey into orbit on space shuttle Discovery's upcoming mission to the International Space Station. During the STS-119 mission, Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold will step 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 is scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than March 15, 2009. The shuttle will deliver 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 will require 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 are skillfully choreographed to meet time requirements and how the Hubble repair procedures are 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 will depend on the spacesuits, tools and skills that will be used to repair Hubble, and the people at NASA who make this all happen.

Visit the education resource site "The Hubble Space Telescope Inspires Wonder" for more information.
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This animation shows the space shuttle capture of the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: DigitalSpace Corporation

The STS-125 mission will return 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 97,000 times and provided more than 4,000 astronomers access to the stars not possible from inside Earth's atmosphere. Hubble has helped answer some of science's key questions and 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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