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In 1993 the United States and Russia signed an historic agreement committing both countries to a broad range of cooperative activities in space. This agreement included the “development of a common space suit.” This paper describes the major elements of a Common Space suit System (CSS) approach, presents the current status of flight planning towards implementing the agreement, and discusses some future challenges. Planning the CSS program revealed different theoretical “levels of commonality,” ranging from minimum interoperability to a concept of a single, common design embodying common manufacturing and full interchangeability. Reviewing these reveals some of the practical limitations to commonality that relate to both evolution (of existing U.S. and Russian space suits) and revolution (a brand new space suit).

The European Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency (RKA) are jointly developing a new space suit system for improved extravehicular activity (EVA) capabilities in support of the MIR2 Space Station Programme, the EVA Suit 2000. Recent national policy agreements between the U.S. and Russia on planned cooperations in manned space also propose the development of a common space suit system for potential use with the International Space Station. It is thus timely to report the current status of ongoing work on international EVA interoperability being conducted by the Committee on EVA Protocols and Operations of the International Academy of Astronautics initiated in 1991. This paper summarises the current EVA interoperability issues to be resolved and presents quantified vehicle interface requirements for the current U.S. Shuttle EMU and Russian MIR Orlan DMA and the new European/Russian EVA Suit 2000 extravehicular systems.

America and Russia have independently implemented designs of individual life support systems to provide extravehicular activity (EVA) capability in support of the Space Shuttle and Orbital Station Mir programs. With the end of the “cold war,” and establishment of new cooperative relationships between America and Russia, joint space ventures are being planned. Mixed American and Russian crews are currently training for upcoming Space Shuttle and Orbital Station Mir missions with a Shuttle-to-Mir rendezvous flight scheduled for 1995. While not currently planned, a joint American and Russian effort to develop and demonstrate Space Shuttle and Mir compatibility to conduct an extravehicular crew rescue from either country's spacecraft would appear to be a desirable future objective.

The NASA/Industry Shuttle EMU team initiated an EMU program activity in 1988 to reduce EMU criticality 1 failure causes, reduce ground operations costs, and also to enhance on-orbit operational Extravehicular Activity (EVA) capability. Replacement/refurbishment hardware is being developed, certified, and delivered. System level life extention testing is expected to extend the Life Limited Components replacement schedule. Goals of this program are to achieve a 25 percent reduction in ground turn-around man-hours and processing time between missions and to extend Extravehicular Activity (EVA) on-orbit capabilities expected to be necessary to support Space Station Freedom assembly and contingency EVA operations. This paper identifies and describes tasks being implemented with expected benefits to NASA-manned spaceflight programs.