ILC Dover Aerospace & Defense

ILC Dover Aerospace & Defense ILC Dover has supplied NASA spacesuits since Apollo, & innovating for 50 years.

The same softgoods that protect crews in space also cushion their landing. When Mars Pathfinder reached the surface in 1...
09/08/2026

The same softgoods that protect crews in space also cushion their landing.

When Mars Pathfinder reached the surface in 1997, the Sojourner rover arrived cushioned by airbags we designed and built. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed the same way in 2004, absorbing impacts of roughly 50 km/h (about 30 mph). Today, six of our landing airbags cushion Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner during ground landings, protecting the crew and helping make the capsule reusable.

ILC Dover’s vented airbag systems can now set down payloads weighing more than 20 tons, and the same technology is designed to protect cargo and exploration systems landing on Earth, the Moon and Mars.

We prove the LIFE™ Habitat is safe by pressurizing it until it bursts. At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, ILC Dover...
09/04/2026

We prove the LIFE™ Habitat is safe by pressurizing it until it bursts.

At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, ILC Dover and Sierra Space have inflated full-scale test modules well beyond their operating pressure until they failed, while instruments recorded the load the structure carried. We’ve evaluated multiple burst test units, and confirmed the structural integrity and safety margins the design requires.

Testing to failure shows how engineered softgoods behave at their limits in a way that simulation alone can’t confirm. For a structure that crews will live and work inside, those margins have to be proven in hardware.

Sol™ is our launch, entry, and abort spacesuit, designed to protect crews during the most dangerous phases of flight. Th...
09/02/2026

Sol™ is our launch, entry, and abort spacesuit, designed to protect crews during the most dangerous phases of flight.

The suit is form-fitting and lightweight, featuring fire-resistant materials, a large visor with a wide field of view, touchscreen-compatible gloves, and low-torque joints that allow an astronaut to operate spacecraft controls while fully pressurized. That mobility comes from softgoods, the same hand-sewn pressure garment engineering used across our suits.

Each suit is tailored to the spacecraft it flies on and adaptable to different vehicle interfaces, so it performs the same way in an emergency as on a nominal flight. Sol™’s design can be adapted for new crewed vehicles in development, including those that will fly lunar missions.

09/01/2026

Spacewalk day is here, and it’s one of our favorite days of the year! 🧑‍🚀

Just two weeks after becoming the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot headed back outside the International Space Station today alongside NASA astronaut Jessica Meir. They performed maintenance and upgrades on the station, and both astronauts were protected by ILC Dover spacesuits.

A spacesuit is only half of the system that keeps an astronaut alive. The rest is carried in the life support unit on th...
09/01/2026

A spacesuit is only half of the system that keeps an astronaut alive. The rest is carried in the life support unit on the astronaut’s back.

Tex-PLSS is the portable life support system ILC Dover is developing in Houston for the next generation of spacewalks, including those on the lunar surface. It supplies breathable air and keeps the suit’s environment stable throughout a spacewalk. We’ve designed it as a modular, upgradeable system, engineered alongside the softgoods it supports, so individual components can be improved or replaced as missions evolve, rather than redesigning the whole unit.

The Texas Space Commission has backed that work with up to $4.49 million through its SEARF Trust grant program, supporting development at our Houston facility.

A space station can be made of fabric. Pressurizable structures launch folded inside a standard rocket fairing and infla...
08/27/2026

A space station can be made of fabric.

Pressurizable structures launch folded inside a standard rocket fairing and inflate in orbit to roughly three times the interior volume of a comparable rigid module. Its softgoods pressure shell is built from layers of woven fabric, with exterior layers engineered to protect against debris and extreme temperatures.

The added interior volume matters for long-duration missions. The habitat is designed for living and working in low-Earth orbit, or on the lunar and Martian surfaces. Its interior can be reconfigured for different crew sizes and mission profiles without replacing the structure itself.

📸: Sierra Space

Every spacesuit we fly is sewn by hand. A spacesuit is a softgoods system, a series of engineered fabric layers that hol...
08/25/2026

Every spacesuit we fly is sewn by hand.

A spacesuit is a softgoods system, a series of engineered fabric layers that hold 4.3 psi of breathable atmosphere against the vacuum of space. Every seam must carry that load for the life of the suit. Our sewing technicians in Frederica join each layer, seam by seam, and every stitch is inspected and tested before a spacesuit is cleared for flight.

That’s how Astro™, our suit for spacewalks and surface exploration, comes together. The same is true of Sol™, the suit that protects crews during launch and re-entry. ILC Dover has built pressure garments this way since the earliest days of the space program, and that discipline carries over to the suits now being built for lunar missions.

08/24/2026

What does a day in the life of an aerospace intern look like?

Follow ILC Dover intern Nico Summa, a Texas A&M University undergraduate and mechatronics engineer working on the TEX-PLSS program. From hands-on projects to working alongside experienced engineers, Nico is putting his skills to work while gaining firsthand experience developing next-generation life-support technology.

08/20/2026

Come spend the day with ILC Dover intern Lucas Yanok as he works on the TEX-PLSS program.

As a mechanical engineering graduate student at the University of Houston, Lucas is getting hands-on experience putting his skills to work on next-generation life-support technology and seeing what it takes to bring aerospace systems from the drawing board to reality.

No two astronauts are the exact same size, and a spacesuit only works when it properly fits the astronaut inside it. Tha...
08/17/2026

No two astronauts are the exact same size, and a spacesuit only works when it properly fits the astronaut inside it.

That’s why ILC Dover designed Astro™ using a modular sizing system, something only a softgoods suit allows. Components are produced in a range of sizes, then combined and adjusted until the suit fits an individual crew member’s body and movement. The result fits more than 95% of the global population, opening the door to a wider range of explorers than earlier suit designs could accommodate.

Fit affects more than comfort. A spacewalk can last six hours or longer, and a well-fitting suit conserves a crew member’s energy and preserves their reach throughout the entire work period. As lunar missions progress from flybys to surface stays, crews will spend more of their day working in a spacesuit, and fit will matter even more.

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