What Do Astronauts Wear in Space? Cool Facts About Space Suits for Kids! [2025]

How Space Suits Keep Astronauts Safe

It is important for crew members to stay safe in space, so they wear special suits called spacesuits. It's like a movable spaceship that protects against radiation and micrometeoroids, gives you oxygen to breathe, and keeps the temperature stable. Space suits are very important for astronauts' safety and for letting them work outside of their ship.  Astronauts wear special clothes called spacesuits to stay safe.  When they go into space or fly very high in the sky, they wear it.  There are no holes in spacesuits.  In other words, they make sure pilots are safe in space, which is cold, empty, and has no air. 

Parts of a Space Suit: From Head to Toe

Spacesuits have their own ways to keep them warm and cool. They also come with a radio for talking to other people. They can breathe fresh air in these clothes. In addition, they keep the air pressure around the body average. The whole body is covered by a spacesuit. It has a cap on top of the head and gloves for the hands.  The inside of the helmet is clear, so you can see. When astronauts fly in the space shuttle, on rockets, or on space stations, they wear spacesuits. For spacewalks, they wear a spacesuit that is stronger and has more parts.  

How Do Space Suits Help Astronauts Breathe and Stay Cool?

Space is a vacuum, which means there is no air to breathe, and it's very cold. Astronauts are safe from these risks, as well as from the very high temperatures, space dust, and dangerous radiation. Spacesuits bring air to the body, keep it at the right temperature, and get rid of carbon dioxide. They can also drink water. Even though space suits are big, they are made so that astronauts can move around and do things outside of the ship, like spacewalks.  

Space suits are made of many layers of different materials, each of which is meant to do a certain job.  Some of these layers keep the temperature stable, protect against micrometeoroids (tiny space rocks), and even work as radio antennas. Space suits come in different styles. Others are more complicated, like those used for spacewalks, and have a portable life support system. Some are worn inside the ship as a safety measure in case the cabin pressure drops.  

A Journey Through History: From Mercury to Apollo

For the Mercury program, NASA made its first spacesuits.  NASA sent people into space for the first time with the Mercury program.  The simple suits were based on the ones that U.S. Navy pilots wore.  Back then, astronauts didn't go on spacewalks, and they only wore Mercury suits inside the ship.  Gemini was the first program that NASA used to send people on spacewalks. The suits used for Gemini were more advanced than the suits used for Mercury, but they were not as complicated as the suits used today.  These suits did not have their own ways to stay alive. Instead, they used a tube called an umbilical to connect to the Gemini spacecraft's life support systems. 

For the Apollo program, spacesuits had to do things that the first suits did not have to do. These spacesuits were made to keep scientists safe while they walked on the Moon.  They also had boots made to walk on rocks, which were different from the other suits. There was also a life support device in the Apollo suits, which is similar to the Portable Life Support Subsystem on the current suit. With a life support system on the spacesuit, the astronauts could go on adventures away from the lunar landing. On the Skylab space station, people wore suits that looked a lot like the Apollo outfits. Just like the Gemini suits, the Skylab suits used an umbilical to connect to the spacecraft's life support equipment. 

Modern Space Suits Used by NASA and Russia

Astronauts at NASA wear more than just the EMU these days. The astronauts wear the orange Advanced Crew Escape Suit when they take off and land. One thing that you can't wear in space is this suit.  NASA pilots will wear the Russian Orlan spacesuit from time to time. The Russians use this suit for spacewalks. It is like the EMU.  The Sokol suit is another one from Russia. The Sokol is also only meant to be used inside a spaceship, just like the Advanced Crew Escape Suit. The Russian Soyuz rocket uses it.