{"id":169160,"date":"2023-08-07T02:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T07:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/why-nasa-spacesuits-are-white"},"modified":"2023-08-07T02:23:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T07:23:00","slug":"why-nasa-spacesuits-are-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/why-nasa-spacesuits-are-white","title":{"rendered":"Why NASA spacesuits are white"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/why-nasa-spacesuits-are-white2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Narrator:<\/strong> Here on Earth, our atmosphere shields us from 77% of the sun\u2019s radiation. But astronauts in space don\u2019t have that natural shield, making them vulnerable to blistering temperatures, severe sunburn, and even cancer-causing cell damage. So to combat that, they wear white suits that reflect the sun\u2019s harmful radiation. It\u2019s just like how painting a wall white keeps the room cooler than a dark color because lighter paint absorbs 35% less heat.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cathleen Lewis: <\/strong>It\u2019s the ideal color to keep the astronauts safe. If you\u2019re planning to go out in outer space, that reflective nature is an absolute.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Narrator:<\/strong> But those white EVA suits aren\u2019t the only garment in an astronaut\u2019s closet. When heading into space or coming home, NASA astronauts wear a bright orange suit similar in color to the safety vests Air Force pilots wear, and it\u2019s for similar reasons because that loud orange stands out against the blue ocean and sky and is perfect for attracting attention, so if there\u2019s a malfunction during landing and astronauts have to abandon ship, so to speak, they need to be easy to spot for rescue crews. That\u2019s why orange was the color of choice for missions like Russia\u2019s Vostok program as well as current ISS launch and reentry suits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Narrator: Here on Earth, our atmosphere shields us from 77% of the sun\u2019s radiation. But astronauts in space don\u2019t have that natural shield, making them vulnerable to blistering temperatures, severe sunburn, and even cancer-causing cell damage. So to combat that, they wear white suits that reflect the sun\u2019s harmful radiation. It\u2019s just like how painting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}