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The paper describes the effort carried out in Europe for the design and development of an EVA Suit Enclosure Module (ESEM) operating at 500 hPa, within the frame of the development studies of the Hermes Spaceplane EVA System. The general ESEM design is supported by four technology studies each one focused on a breadboard manufacturing and testing. A glove breadboard is fully tested in a dedicated glove box; The bending performances of the rolling convolute shoulder joint breadboard are assessed through mechanical tests; A material screening is performed leading to an arm thermal protection and an elbow soft joint respectively thermally and mechanically tested; A demonstration of the biomedical section is performed. All these technology programs and a general definition study conclude to a definition of the ESEM flight model described in the paper.

In the frame of the development of the European EVA Suit, a complete trade-off was conducted to select the lower torso architecture. This study, performed under an ESA contract, included a formal trade-off dealing with all cost and programmatic impacts together with a technical assessment based on man rated underwater evaluations and analysis. The candidate architectures were: the European baseline including 2 hip and 2 thigh bearings, the Russian like soft ORLAN-DMA, a soft lower torso including 2 thigh bearings and another soft one including 2 calf bearings. The idea was to compare the different design performances without having necessarily developed the 4 pressurized lower torsos and then also to gain experience on predicting methods for such ergonomic/kinematic studies. The trade-off was based on the manned underwater evaluation of ergonomical suit simulators (wet suit concept), supported by the 1-g pressurized evaluation of the Russian ORLAN-DMA and CAD-CAM kinematic analysis.