U.S. Spacesuit Knowledge Capture Accomplishments in Fiscal Years 2012 and 2013

The NASA U.S. Spacesuit Knowledge Capture (KC) program has existed since the beginning of 2008. The program was designed to share historical spacesuit information with engineers and other technical team members to augment their understanding of the spacesuit, its evolution, its limitations, and its capabilities. More than 65 seminars have captured spacesuit history and knowledge over the last six years of the program’s existence. Subject-matter experts have provided lectures and some were interviewed to help bring the spacesuit to life to ensure lessons learned will never be lost. Also, the program concentrated on reaching out to the public and industry by making the recorded events part of the public domain through the NASA technical library’s YouTube site. The U.S. Spacesuit KC topics have included lessons learned from some of the most prominent spacesuit experts and spacesuit users including current and former astronauts. The events have enriched the spacesuit legacy knowledge from Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and International Space Station programs. Also, expert engineers and scientists have shared their challenges and successes to be remembered. Based on evidence by the thousands of people who have viewed the recordings online, the last few years have been some of the most successful years of the U.S. Spacesuit KC program’s life with numerous digital recordings and public releases. This paper reviews the events accomplished and archived over Fiscal Years 2012 and 2013 and highlights two of the most memorable ones. This paper also communicates ways to access the events that are available internally on the NASA domain, as well as those released on the public domain, and it documents the future outlook for KC.