Decathlon has unveiled its most ambitious project ever: a space suit designed to be put on in less than a minute. It’s called Eurosuit and it’s the result of an all-French collaboration between Cnes, the startup Spartan Space and the medical institute Medes. It’s not a suit for spacewalks – it’s an inter-vehicular model, meant for use inside the ISS – but it represents a huge leap in the way astronauts prepare for emergencies and carry out their daily activities in orbit.
The idea behind the project is surprisingly simple: to create a suit that can be put on and taken off by oneself, quickly and intuitively. The answer came in the form of a modular, lightweight, flexible design, with bellows at the shoulders, elbows and knees that allow astronauts to move easily in the tight spaces of the International Space Station. The helmet, meanwhile, uses an internal mesh that adapts to each astronaut’s morphology, solving one of the most common issues with equipment in microgravity.
The Eurosuit will officially debut in 2026, when French astronaut Sophie Adenot will test it during her long-duration mission on the ISS. She will be the one to assess its ergonomics, freedom of movement and ease of use as she conducts experiments, handles tools or interacts with touchscreens and onboard instruments. A fascinating detail is that the suit is also designed to adapt to the well-known phenomenon of body lengthening in microgravity, which can change height by several centimetres during a stay in space.
For Decathlon, this project marks a completely new frontier: from perfecting tents that pop up in two seconds to designing clothing for the most extreme environment imaginable. For Cnes, on the other hand, Eurosuit is a strategic piece of a broader vision: building, step by step, greater European autonomy in human space exploration.
Eurosuit is not just a suit: it’s an experiment in design, technology and vision. And who knows… in a few years we might look back on this prototype as the beginning of Europe’s contribution to the next major phase of the space adventure.
