What Is the Decathlon Eurosuit IVA Suit?

A New Generation of Spacesuit for Europe

The image of an astronaut is inseparable from their spacesuit. It’s their personal spaceship, a shield against the most hostile environment imaginable. But not all spacesuits are the bulky, backpack-equipped ensembles of a moonwalk. A different, equally important type of suit is worn inside the spacecraft, and it’s getting a radical redesign from an unexpected source. The European Space Agency (ESA) is collaborating on a next-generation “intra-vehicular activity” (IVA) suit, and a lead partner in its design is Decathlon, the global sporting goods retailer.

This project, known as the Eurosuit, represents a major step in European ambitions for human spaceflight. It’s a garment designed not for walking on the Moon, but for the most dangerous phases of any mission: launch, re-entry, and in-flight emergencies. The project blends the high-tech demands of aerospace engineering with the user-focused, mass-market expertise of a consumer sports brand. The result is a suit that prioritizes speed, comfort, and ergonomics in a way that could redefine astronaut safety.

Defining the IVA Suit: The “Flight Suit” of Space Travel

To understand the Eurosuit, one must first distinguish between the two main categories of spacesuits. The most famous is the Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) suit. This is the white, bulky suit seen on the International Space Station (ISS) or during the Apollo missions. It’s a self-contained spaceship, complete with a heavy-duty life support backpack, thermal-control layers, and micrometeoroid protection. It’s designed to keep an astronaut alive in the pure vacuum of space for many hours.

The Eurosuit is the other kind: an Intra-Vehicular Activity (IVA) suit. This is the astronaut’s “flight suit.” It’s worn inside the capsule during ascent into orbit and descent back to Earth. Its primary job is to act as a final layer of protection. If the spacecraft’s cabin were to suddenly depressurize – a catastrophic leak – the IVA suit would automatically inflate, providing the astronaut with a bubble of pressurized, breathable air to survive. It’s the same principle as a fighter pilot’s G-suit, but for pressure instead of gravity.

These suits are also known as “getaway suits” or “launch-and-entry suits.” Every astronaut on a NASA SpaceX Crew Dragon, Boeing Starliner, or Russian Soyuz (spacecraft) mission wears one. They are sleeker, lighter, and offer more mobility than an EVA suit because they are not designed to be worn in the vacuum. They connect via an “umbilical” to the spacecraft’s own life support systems.

The Problem of Donning: Why Two Minutes Matters

The single greatest innovation of the Decathlon Eurosuit is its focus on speed. The primary design requirement is that an astronaut must be able to put the suit on, completely unaided, in less than two minutes.

This isn’t a matter of convenience; it’s a matter of survival. Imagine an emergency scenario aboard the International Space Station. A sudden alarm indicates a toxic leak, a fire, or a rapid depressurization, requiring the crew to evacuate to their “lifeboat” capsule (like a docked Crew Dragon or Soyuz (spacecraft)). In such a high-stress, time-critical situation, fumbling with complex zips, seals, and straps is not an option.

Legacy suits, like the Russian Sokol space suit (a workhorse of the space program for decades), are effective but notoriously difficult to put on alone. They often require a crewmate’s assistance to seal the complex entry points. The new generation of IVA suits, including the Eurosuit, are being designed with this “solo-donning” capability at their core. A two-minute window means that from the moment of an alarm, the crew can be suited, pressurized, and protected, dramatically increasing their chances of survival.

This focus on rapid, unassisted donning is a paradigm shift, moving the suit from a pre-planned garment to a true piece of emergency safety equipment, much like a life jacket or a parachute.

The Consortium: Who is Building the Eurosuit?

The Eurosuit isn’t the product of a single company. It’s the result of a specialized French consortium, with ESA as the eventual customer. Each member brings a unique piece of the puzzle.

• Decathlon: The name that raises eyebrows is also the key to the suit’s innovation. Decathlon is the lead on user experience, ergonomics, and the suit’s architecture. They are applying their decades of research in high-performance sporting textiles and human-body mechanics to the problem of a spacesuit. They are also bringing a mindset of mass production and cost control, which is new to an industry accustomed to bespoke, multi-million-dollar garments.
• CNES: The French space agency. CNES is the project overseer and technical authority. They are the prime contractor, managing the project and ensuring the final product meets the extreme and exacting standards of human spaceflight. They bridge the gap between Decathlon’s consumer-world innovation and the non-negotiable safety requirements of space.
• Spartan Space: A Marseille-based aerospace company. Spartan Space is responsible for the suit’s core architecture and its interface with the life support system. They are the “traditional” aerospace partner, ensuring the suit can reliably hold pressure and connect to the spacecraft’s vital systems.
• MEDES: The Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology. This group is focused on the “human” part of the human-machine system. They are responsible for integrating biomonitoring systems into the suit. This means the suit won’t just protect the astronaut; it will actively report on their health, tracking vital signs like heart rate, respiration, and temperature in real-time.

This unique partnership model is a reflection of the “New Space” era, where government agencies are actively seeking out non-traditional commercial partners to drive innovation and reduce costs.

Why a Sporting Goods Company?

The involvement of Decathlon is the most-discussed aspect of the Eurosuit project. On the surface, a company known for affordable tents and running shoes seems like an odd choice for building life-support equipment. But the logic becomes clear when considering the specific challenges of an IVA suit.

At its core, an IVA suit is an article of high-performance technical apparel. The problems it needs to solve – pressure management, thermal control, moisture-wicking, and mobility – are surprisingly similar to those faced in extreme terrestrial sports.

Expertise in Extremes

Decathlon’s in-house design teams have spent decades developing gear for environments that are hostile to the human body.

• Deep-Sea Diving: Their dive gear must reliably manage extreme external pressure, ensure seals are watertight, and allow for mobility. This experience translates directly to designing a suit that manages internal pressure.
• High-Altitude Mountaineering: This gear must be lightweight, provide excellent thermal insulation, and be highly durable. It must also allow for a full range of motion for climbing, all while the user is wearing gloves. These are all requirements for an IVA suit.
• Ergonomics and Fit: Decathlon produces gear for millions of different body types. Their deep understanding of human factors, how the body moves, and how to design for comfort over long durations is invaluable. An astronaut may be strapped into their suit for over eight hours during a launch or landing. Discomfort isn’t just an annoyance; it’s a source of fatigue and a potential distraction during a mission’s most demanding phases.

Decathlon is applying this user-centric design philosophy to the Eurosuit. The goal is to create a suit that fits so well, an astronaut almost forgets they are wearing it.

The Power of Mass Production and Cost

Historically, spacesuits are artisanal products. They are custom-built by hand, cost millions of dollars each, and take years to produce. This model is unsustainable in an era of expanding commercial spaceflight.

Decathlon is a master of industrialization. They design products with manufacturing efficiency in mind. By bringing this “design for manufacturing” mindset to the Eurosuit, the consortium hopes to create a suit that is not only effective but also scalable and affordable. If Europe is to have its own independent human spaceflight program, it can’t afford to spend a decade and billions of dollars on suits. It needs a solution that is “good enough” for safety and also reproducible at a reasonable cost.

This approach mirrors NASA’s own shift toward commercial partnerships. NASA didn’t design the SpaceX launch suit; they provided a set of requirements and let the company innovate. ESA and CNES are following a similar path, leveraging the textile and manufacturing expertise of the commercial world to get a better, cheaper, and faster result.

The Anatomy of the Eurosuit

While many specific details of the Eurosuit remain proprietary, the consortium has revealed several key design features that set it apart.

Rethinking the “One-Piece” Design

The sub-two-minute donning time is achieved through a radical rethink of how an astronaut gets into the suit. Instead of the complex, multi-person seals of the past, the Eurosuit is a one-piece garment that is entered from the rear. It’s designed to be put on just like a pair of overalls or a firefighter’s turnout gear.

The innovation lies in the zipper and seal design. The suit features sealed, ergonomic pullers that are easy to grab and use, even when wearing the inner-layer gloves. The main zipper path is designed to be intuitive and require minimal contortion to close. Once sealed, it creates a pressure-tight barrier.

The suit itself is also designed to be “body-shape tolerant,” meaning it can be adjusted to fit a wide range of astronauts. This is a departure from the “fully custom” model and is essential for a program that needs to suit up a diverse new class of ESA astronauts.

Textiles and Materials

The Eurosuit is a multi-layered system. Each layer serves a distinct purpose.

• The Comfort Liner: The innermost layer, worn against the skin. This is a moisture-wicking fabric, similar to high-end athletic base layers. Its job is to pull sweat away from the astronaut’s body, keeping them dry and comfortable. This is a specialty of sports apparel companies.
• The Pressure Bladder: This is the heart of the suit. It’s an airtight layer that inflates with air during a depressurization event. The challenge is to make this layer both perfectly airtight and extremely flexible.
• The Restraint Layer: The pressure bladder, if inflated on its own, would blow up like a balloon, making the astronaut rigid and immobile. The restraint layer is a non-stretch, high-strength fabric placed over the bladder. It’s tailored to the human form, so when the bladder inflates, it presses inward on the astronaut, providing the necessary counter-pressure, but in a shape that still allows for movement.
• The Outer Layer: This is the visible, protective shell. It’s made of fire-retardant materials to protect the astronaut from a cabin fire, one of the greatest dangers in a high-oxygen environment. It’s also durable, to resist tears and abrasion.

Mobility and Fit

A key complaint of legacy IVA suits is their stiffness, especially when pressurized. The Eurosuit tackles this with several innovations borrowed from sports.

It features “bellows” at the key joints: shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. These are folded, flexible sections of fabric that allow the joint to bend without a significant increase in force. This means an astronaut can still reach controls, flip switches, and move around the cabin, even if the suit is fully pressurized.

A more subtle innovation is accounting for spinal elongation. In microgravity, an astronaut’s spine lengthens, sometimes by as much as two inches. A suit that fits perfectly on Earth would become painfully tight in orbit. The Eurosuit incorporates a length-adjustment feature, allowing the astronaut to fine-tune the fit of the torso once they are in space.

The Helmet and Communications

The helmet is a “lattice-structured” design. This allows for a custom-fitted shape, tailored to each astronaut’s head, which improves comfort and visibility. It connects to the suit with a simple, secure “lock and twist” neck ring.

The helmet integrates the suit’s communications system (the “comm cap”) and provides the flow of breathable air. Modern IVA suits, and the Eurosuit is no exception, are also being designed with touchscreen compatibility in mind. The gloves are being developed to allow astronauts to interact with the tablet computers that now control many spacecraft functions – a problem that the Apollo-era designers never had to consider.

The Broader Context: IVA Suits Explained

The Eurosuit is not being developed in a vacuum. It is the latest entry in a long and storied history of IVA suit design, joining a family of iconic garments that have defined their respective eras of spaceflight.

The “Getaway” Suit: A Brief History

The first “spacesuits” were, in effect, IVA suits. The silvery, high-altitude pressure suits worn by the Project Mercury astronauts were adapted directly from United States Navy aircraft designs. They were uncomfortable, barely mobile, and thankfully never needed in an emergency. The Gemini and Apollo crews wore more advanced IVA suits for launch and landing, separate from the bulky EVA suits they would use in space or on the Moon.

The Orange “Pumpkin Suit”

For a generation, the most recognizable IVA suit was NASA’s Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES). This was the bright-orange “pumpkin suit” worn by all Space Shuttle crews from the 1990s onward. Its color was chosen for high visibility in a sea-rescue scenario. The ACES was a reliable, robust suit, but like the Sokol, it was a product of its time – heavy, cumbersome, and requiring help to put on.

The Russian Sokol

The Sokol space suit is the most-flown spacesuit in history. It has been used by every person launching on a Soyuz (spacecraft) capsule since 1973. It’s a marvel of Soviet-era reliability and simplicity. It is not a comfortable garment. It is famously rigid, and its integrated boots and gloves, combined with a complex “v-zip” entry, make it a true challenge to don. The Eurosuit is, in many ways, a direct 21st-century answer to the problems of the Sokol space suit.

Modern Commercial Suits

The new era of commercial spaceflight brought a design revolution.

• SpaceX: The suit worn by Crew Dragon astronauts is perhaps the most famous. Designed with input from Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez, it’s sleek, minimalist, and undeniably futuristic. But it’s not just for looks. It’s a functional IVA suit, custom-made for each astronaut, with a single “umbilical” connection, a 3D-printed helmet, and touchscreen-compatible gloves.
• Boeing: The “Starliner Blue” suit, designed for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, took a different approach. It’s lighter and more flexible than previous suits, using advanced materials. Its most notable features are its soft, helmet-like hood and large visor for better peripheral vision, and a design that is comfortable even when sitting for hours in the capsule’s seat.

Where Eurosuit Fits In

The Eurosuit is Europe’s answer to these modern designs. It is not trying to be a “Hollywood” suit like the SpaceX model. Instead, it is a “performance” suit, deeply rooted in the Decathlon ethos. It is being designed as a piece of practical, high-performance equipment, with its primary innovations being safety (rapid donning) and user-comfort (ergonomics and fit). It is a suit built for professionals who have a job to do.

The Path to Flight

The Eurosuit project is moving at an uncharacteristically rapid pace for the space industry. The program officially began in late 2023, with prototyping taking place throughout 2024. The design has now matured enough to be tested in the one place that matters: microgravity.

The Epsilon Mission: Trial in Orbit

The Eurosuit is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in 2026. It will be a key part of the “Epsilon” mission, the first long-duration flight of new ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot of France.

Adenot, a former helicopter test pilot, will be in a unique position to evaluate the suit. On board the ISS, she will put the prototype through a rigorous series of tests. She will perform the key “donning and doffing” procedure multiple times to validate the sub-two-minute goal in a weightless environment, where “up” and “down” don’t exist and maneuvering into a suit is a new challenge.

She will also perform a range of movements to test its mobility, stretching, and reaching, just as she would in an emergency. A key test will be her ability to interact with tablet computers while wearing the suit’s gloves, a simple task on Earth that becomes complex when wearing a pressurized garment.

The Feedback Loop

Adenot‘s feedback will be the most valuable data the design team can get. She will report on comfort, fit, hot spots, pressure points, and ease of use. This feedback will be sent directly back to the Decathlon and CNES engineers. This “iterative design” process – building, testing, getting user feedback, and refining – is central to Decathlon’s product-development culture and is now being applied to space hardware.

Following the 2026 ISS test, the design will be finalized. The project is currently on a trajectory for a fully certified, flight-ready suit to be available for ESA astronauts by 2027-2028. This rapid timeline is a testament to the new commercial approach.

A Suit for a European Spaceship

The development of the Eurosuit raises an obvious and important question: What spacecraft will ESA astronauts wear it on?

This is the larger strategic context. For its entire history, Europe has relied on partners for human spaceflight. Its astronauts have flown on the American Space Shuttle and, more recently, on Russian Soyuz (spacecraft)and American SpaceX capsules. When they fly, they use the suits provided by Roscosmos (Sokol space suit) or NASA (SpaceX).

The Eurosuit is a foundational step toward European autonomy. It is a declaration of intent that ESA is serious about developing its own independent human spaceflight capabilities.

ESA is currently funding several “LEO Cargo Return Services” initiatives. These are cargo capsules, much like the SpaceX Cargo Dragon, designed to bring supplies and experiments back from orbit. However, ESA has instructed the companies building them to make them “compatible with the evolution towards a crew transportation.”

This is the key. The Eurosuit is being designed in parallel with the first generation of potential European crewed vehicles. When a European company’s capsule is finally ready to carry a European astronaut, there will be a European-made suit ready and waiting for them.

This move is not just about technology; it’s about sovereignty. Having an independent way to get to space, and the critical life-support hardware to go with it, gives Europe a secure place at the table in the future exploration of the Moon and Mars. The Eurosuit is more than just a piece of clothing. It’s a symbol of Europe’s ambitions for the future.

The EVA Confusion: What the Eurosuit is Not

Given the recent high-profile announcements about new moon suits, it’s easy to get confused. The Eurosuit is not a moon suit. It cannot be used for a spacewalk.

The suits being designed for NASA’s Artemis program are Extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, specifically the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). These are being developed by companies like Axiom Space.

An EVA suit is a “personal spaceship.” It has to protect an astronaut from:

• Vacuum: The total absence of pressure.
• Temperature Extremes: From over 120°C (250°F) in direct sunlight to -150°C (-240°F) in shadow.
• Radiation: The harsh solar and cosmic radiation, unblocked by an atmosphere.
• Micrometeoroids: Tiny, high-velocity particles of rock and metal.

To do this, an EVA suit is a rigid, multi-layered behemoth. It has a “Hard Upper Torso” and a massive backpack (the Portable Life Support System, or PLSS) that contains oxygen, CO2 scrubbers, batteries, and cooling systems.

The Eurosuit has none of these things. It’s a soft suit that connects to the spacecraft’s life support. If an astronaut wore a Eurosuit outside the ISS, they would perish instantly.

This is the same distinction as a Prada collaboration. The Italian fashion house Prada is partnered with Axiom Space to help design the outer layers of their Artemis moon suit. Both Decathlon and Prada are consumer brands bringing textile and design expertise to the space sector, but they are working on two completely different types of suits for two completely different purposes.

Future Evolution: From IVA to EVA?

While the Eurosuit is strictly an intra-vehicular suit, the knowledge gained from its development is invaluable. The project is giving Decathlon, CNES, and Spartan Space a “master’s degree” in spacesuit design. They are learning how to work with pressure bladders, how to manufacture seals, and how to build ergonomic joints.

This knowledge is a stepping stone. ESA is a major partner in the Lunar Gateway, the planned space station in orbit around the Moon. ESA astronauts will fly to the Gateway and will, eventually, walk on the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program. At first, they will be wearing NASA-provided EVA suits.

But the Eurosuit project opens the door for a future, decades from now, where Europe might decide to build its own EVA suit. The expertise gained from the Eurosuit – in materials, manufacturing, and ergonomics – would be the foundation for that far more ambitious project.

In the near term, the rise of commercial space stations like Starlab and Orbital Reef creates a new market. These stations will need crew transport, and those transport vehicles will need IVA suits. Decathlon and its partners are not just building a single suit for ESA; they are positioning themselves to be a key supplier in the emerging low-Earth orbit economy.

Summary

The Decathlon Eurosuit is a quiet but significant development in human spaceflight. It’s a next-generation IVA suit that leverages the unlikely expertise of a sporting goods giant to solve a critical safety problem. Its design, focused on a sub-two-minute unassisted donning time, represents a major leap forward in astronaut emergency preparedness.

The project is more than just a new piece of hardware. It’s a test case for a new way of developing space technology, blending commercial innovation with the rigorous standards of government-led space agencies. Through its upcoming 2026 test mission on the International Space Station with astronaut Sophie Adenot, the Eurosuit is poised to validate this new model.

This suit is a practical, tangible first step in Europe’s long-term strategy for space autonomy. It’s a garment that, while worn inside a capsule, signals a powerful ambition to secure an independent European future in human space exploration.