Who We Are
We won’t write fancy, long, hi-tech and global sounding words to describe ourselves in some vein attempt to impress you. We are the old guard of space suit technology from the NASA glory days of Apollo and Shuttle, teamed up with some of the brightest and best of today’s generation. Half of us have retired from day-to-day operations and ‘working for a living’ lives. The other half are some of the finest minds in the current generation of space graduates, engineers and young entrepreneurs. But all of us have one thing in common. We have an insatiable passion for all things Space and a total focus on developing MECSuit architecture (MEC - Modular and Evolution Capable). Over the next ten years Planetary Protech will redefine space suit technology for the next generation of space exploration. Our journey has started with the M33 EVA suit for Mars.
Planetary Protech was created specifically to develop MECSuit architecture and the first application of that architecture, the MarsSuit - M33 EVA suit for Mars. The company is technically a ‘Start Up’. But in reality, it is the culmination of the careers and business ventures of some of the most experienced ex NASA and space industry individuals of the past fifty years. Established space industry names that have recruited and partnered with an ‘A’ list of MIT and Berkley graduates and ex-graduates, materials and bio specialists, Tech entrepreneurs and space interested advisors and investors.
We are the new ‘A’ Team of Space Suit design and technology……(well actually we’re the M33 Team) but hey….who’s counting? Follow our journey to Mars 2033 on Twitter, Facebook and in our Blogs.
Our Mission is to bridge the gap between the life-long experience of space suit designers from the Apollo and Shuttle days and the unique demands of modern commercial space flight.
The team at Planetary Protech has over 200 years of combined experience of designing, developing and testing space suits for the harshest environments known to mankind. Space Shuttle missions, ISS transfers and the Moon. And now the team has joined forces with some of the brightest next generation of scientists, engineers and specialists in material technologies and bio-management systems to design the first fully operational EVA suit for Mars, to be ready for manned flights in 2033.
Our designers and technology developers are creating a modular approach to space suit design that minimises time to production and reduces cost. Suits are designed with evolution capability built in, so new technologies can be incorporated when they become viable, without the need for major re-design. This allows Planetary Protech to meet the demands of virtually any commercial spaceflight market segment, current and future
Markets Served:
- Sub-Orbital Tourism
- Sub-Orbital Research
- ISS Transit and Return
- Mars EVA
First To Market
The MarsSuit – M33 EVA Suit for Mars is the first application of Planetary Protech’s MECSuit Architecture (Modular and Evolution Capable). It incorporates our patented bio management and filtering systems and NüwaBlend®, a multi-layer Intelligent textile, purpose designed for our MECSuit Architecture.
The M33 EVA suit utilises a break-through concept of drawing in the Mars atmosphere to maintain pressure on the Torso, whilst providing self-generated pressure from oxygen pumped into the helmet. This split system of body pressurisation and the use of smart materials removed the demand for the typical heavy back-pack and gave our suit designers options that significantly reduced the weight of the suit overall. This in turn elongates the time an Astronaut can spend on the surface and the amount of work they can perform while on surface-based missions. It also reduced the complexity of the suits engineering so there are less components to ‘go wrong’ and as a bonus, reduced the cost of manufacture.