With sleek lines and a helmet that looks like it’s straight out of a classic sci-fi film, SpaceX’s crisp new spacesuit has just been unveiled by the company’s CEO Elon Musk.
The billionaire CEO revealed a glimpse of the new design in a photo uploaded to his Instagram account on Wednesday. He teased more details about the suit in the days to come in the image’s caption.
“First picture of SpaceX spacesuit,” Musk wrote. “Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup).”
The sharp white and black spacesuit has already been tested to “double vacuum pressure,” according to Musk. The intrepid inventor also lamented the difficulty in creating a suit that was functional as well as esthetically pleasing.
“Easy to do either separately,” Musk wrote.
The spacesuit is intended to be worn by NASA astronauts during future missions aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Capsules to the International Space Station and back. The compact suits are meant for travel inside the capsule and not for spacewalks.
The private company’s suit comes on the heels of competitor Boeing’s new spacesuit reveal in January. The “Boeing Blue” suit was designed by the David Clark Company for astronauts travelling to the ISS and like SpaceX’s suit, features a sleeker, lighter design for improved mobility.
In conjunction with NASA, SpaceX will begin launching astronauts to the ISS in June 2018. If all goes to plan, it would be the first private company to send humans into space.
