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Op-ed | The Senator and the Commander

By Dava Newman 

For nearly two decades, I have been working to develop revolutionary spacesuit technology called the BioSuit™ system, which enhances astronaut performance by creating pressure through compression directly on the skin rather than with pressurized gas. If NASA is to truly explore Mars and its mountains, astronauts need flexibility and mobility not offered by the heavy and bulky suits that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. We envision astronaut athletes, modular life support systems, advanced cheetah-like robotic scouts, and team members on earth immersed in near real-time scientific data. Our focus is just one piece of a vast, complex, and expensive undertaking to land human boots on Mars and beyond.

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