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This article first appears in Vogue Business.
If you are lucky enough to land on the moon, you will be very eager to see your surroundings. But the ultraviolet radiation and lunar dust on the moon’s surface make this easy to say. The task of sports performance glasses brand Oakley is the solution.
“When we started our orbital mission, which has been done by all humans since 1972, we have been trained to put the visor down before the sun rises and raise it when it lands,” Michael Lopez-Alegria, chief astronaut at Axiom, told Axiom. Vogue Business In the interview.
“This happens every 45 minutes, and when you are orbiting the earth, if you forget to put the visor down, you’ll be quick to remind: the sun is definitely shining in space, it’s the widest, brightest light you can imagine.”
Protecting astronauts such as Lopez-Alegria from the visually complex and hostile conditions of the moon requires complex optical designs, and Oakley has been chosen to protect the eyes of the next human landing on the moon. In 2027, astronauts take off to the Artemis III mission (the first human moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972), they will wear a space visor designed by Oakley and his official partner Axiom Space.
“If you think about when you’re in the sun, everything in the shadows will seem darker because your eyes are adapting to brightness,” said Lopez-Alegria. “Oakley professionals are making sunglasses that keep your eyes open even in bright sunlight, so they are the ideal partner for designing performance coatings for space visors to help us with these transitions.”
The crew of the Artemis III will be more stylish than ever, as this visor will also be paired with the spacesuit That Prada designed it together and axiom.
“The aesthetics of litigation is not something that was often considered in the past, and of course, a lot of engineering design starts technically first,” Russell Ralston, executive vice president of planning management and engineering at Axiom, told Axiom. Vogue Business.
“But we chose a point of view that it is not necessarily orthis may be and – We can provide safe, high performance and optimized suits for the requirements of the task while being aesthetically pleasing.
“We hope this will be a bit inspiring for the next generation of space explorers, because we are indeed in a new era of space commerce,” Ralston added.