Prada and Axiom Unveil Artemis Moon Suit Cooling Garment
Summary: On June 7, 2026, Italian fashion house Prada and aerospace company Axiom Space held a press event at the Prada store in New York to officially reveal the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) for NASA's Artemis program — the functional undergarment astronauts will wear inside the AxEMU lunar spacesuit. The LCVG merges space engineering with high-fashion design, marking the first cooling undergarment designed for lunar surface operations since the Apollo era.
The Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) designed by Prada and Axiom Space. (Image credit: Axiom Space)
Prada Enters Space: From the Runway to the Moon
Axiom Space Senior Vice President Russell Ralston introduced the garment at the press event: "This is the garment that astronauts wear inside the suit. It provides them comfort, cooling, and moisture management." The LCVG resembles high-end activewear — featuring a v-neck design, thumbhole sleeves, throwback stirrup pants, functional tubing, and Prada's signature red stripe.
Axiom Space CEO and President Jonathan Cirtain remarked: "It's not oftentimes that astrophysics and aeronautics develops things that are aesthetically pleasing. But aesthetics matter as much as engineering performance — Prada's design expertise lets us break through on both fronts."
From Apollo to Artemis: The Evolution of Lunar Cooling Garments
Liquid cooling garments are not a new concept — Apollo-era astronauts wore similar garments on the lunar surface. However, Artemis missions face fundamentally different challenges. NASA plans to land near the lunar South Pole, a region with complex terrain where permanently shadowed craters reach extremely low temperatures while sunlit areas are intensely hot, placing far greater demands on thermal management.
Cirtain noted: "The lunar South Pole is a very complex environment, and so there are a lot of interesting upgrades we've made to what's been available in the past." The new LCVG and AxEMU spacesuit have undergone a variety of temperature, gravity, and other environmental tests.
A Vision for Scalable Spaceflight
Axiom Space's ambitions extend beyond providing a handful of suits for Artemis missions. Ralston said: "I think that that's something that's important for this new era of spaceflight, where we want to see thousands and millions of people go to space. We can't keep doing things the way we've been doing them."
This means the LCVG must achieve more efficient body fitting and scalable manufacturing potential while maintaining space-grade performance. The combination of Prada's fashion manufacturing expertise and Axiom's aerospace engineering capabilities is precisely aimed at exploring this possibility.