New York — This weekend, I watched as Prada and Axiom Space unveiled the next-generation Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment for astronauts on the moon. This is a critical piece of Axiom's new AxEMU spacesuits the company is designing with Prada for NASA's Artemis lunar missions. And it comes complete with stirrup pants and thumb holes.High fashion hit the Artemis program when designer fashion house Prada and aerospace company Axiom teamed up to create AxEMU, the spacesuits that NASA astronauts will be wearing on the moon. And in a reveal on Sunday (June 7), we finally got a look at the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG for short)."This is the garment that astronauts wear inside the suit," Axiom Space Senior Vice President Russell Ralston told Space.com during a press event at Prada on June 7. "It provides them comfort, cooling, and those kinds of things ... really proud of the design."
Axiom Space and Prada unveiled a sleek, stylish new liquid cooling and ventilation undergarment (right) for their new spacesuit that Artemis astronauts will wear on the moon during at a flagship Prada store in NYC on June 7, 2026. (Image credit: Space.com/Steve Spaleta)Checking out the designThe LCVG looks like a really cool piece of activewear. From the v-neck to the thumbhole sleeves, throwback stirrup pants, tech-y tubing and Prada's signature red stripe, this thing looks cool. But it does a lot more than look cool."It's not oftentimes that astrophysics [and] aeronautics develops things that are aesthetically pleasing," Axiom Space CEO and President Jonathan Cirtain said at the event. But, he added, "while aesthetically pleasing, this is a safety suit ... it's a really remarkable piece of technology."The garment is made with built-in channels in which small tubes carrying cooling liquid are placed. These tubes will circulate this liquid around the suit, providing temperature control. This design is an upgrade on previous designs which have had such tubes threaded through mesh material, a time-consuming task, Ralston said. The suit also has larger, black tubes that carry air first over the wearer's face and then around the body, "providing carbon dioxide management as they exhale, and providing oxygen back to the astronauts as they inhale," according to Cirtain.Image 1 of 4The back of an Axiom Space and Prada liquid cooling garment for a new spacesuit, covered with embedded hoses and tubes.(Image credit: Axiom Space)The garment is intended for use by future moonwalking astronauts, though Cirtain noted that it might be tested first with astronauts onboard the International Space Station, and some testing might even occur with NASA's upcoming Artemis 3 mission, though this mission will not land astronauts on the lunar surface.This new garment (and modified iterations of the garment and spacesuit) have gone through a variety of temperature, gravity, and other environmental testing. In addition to possible ISS testing time, the suit is also likely to be tested in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (the giant swimming pool where astronauts practice for space).AxEMU along with its undersuit the LCVG isn't just the newest moon-bound spacesuit, it has major improvements over the Apollo spacesuits, the last suits to protect humans on the lunar surface. And this is for good reason. Not only has there been significant technological progress in the 54 years since the final Apollo moon mission in 1972, but the Artemis 4 mission (the first Artemis mission slated to land humans on the moon) will send astronauts to the lunar South Pole, which is notably colder than previously explored regions on the moon.
