Less than a month after the historic Artemis II mission began, a Georgia Tech researcher is being recognized for his work in helping keep astronauts safe in space.

Thomas Orlando, a Regents’ professor at Georgia Tech, designed the spacesuits worn by astronauts on Artemis 2. He said his team focused on protecting the suits from micrometeorite impacts and especially lunar dust.

“We realized that a bigger problem, at least from NASA’s perspective, is dust," Orlando said. “We don’t really want dust to be on spacesuits. It can get into the seals. It could, you know, cause them to leak.”

Orlando works with graduate students to study the challenges astronauts may face in space and on the moon.