Photos: Building a better space suit

When astronauts head back to the moon and off to Mars in the not too distant future, there will be a dress code. The well-attired traveler will need outerwear designed for an inhospitable environment, where a fashion failure isn't just a faux pas but a matter of life or death.

Enter the designers--in this case, specialists like Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT. That's Newman in the picture, modeling the BioSuit that she's been working on with her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students and Cambridge, Mass., design firm Trotti and Associates. Where traditional space suits are known for their bulk, the BioSuit conforms much more closely to the contours of the human body.

Caption text by CNET News.com Managing Editor Jonathan Skillings

Photo by Donna Coveney/MIT