Even though they perform superhuman feats, astronauts always look a little ridiculous. Their clunky pressurized spacesuits are functional–they provide oxygen, scrub CO2, and keep astronauts safe from the elements–but they aren’t exactly well-suited for the kind of intensive exploration that astronauts will conduct when humans finally reach Mars.
Dava Newman, a speaker at this year’s TEDWomen event in San Francisco, has spent more than a decade working on a sleeker, better spacesuit for Mars exploration. The MIT aerospace engineering professor’s Spiderman-like “BioSuit” will finally make astronauts look sexy, and ensure that they can explore difficult terrain without tripping over the bulk of the nearly 300-pound suit in use today.