TALK about throwing down the gauntlet. NASA has challenged private teams to design the next generation of gloves for spacewalking astronauts.
The $250,000 contest, announced on 22 July, is part of the agency’s Centennial Challenges programme. Three other competitions are already up and running: to extract oxygen from lunar dirt, to design a strong tether for future space elevators, and a wireless robot that can climb a space cable while carrying a load.
Space gloves are tricky to design. The ones used by the space shuttle crew can easily tire an astronaut’s hands because the gloves are pressurised, making…
