Orlan EVA Spacesuit Spare Gloves

Orlan EVA Spacesuit Spare Gloves

Cream gloves with orange rubber covering on the palm and blue rubber fingertips. Spare gloves for the Orlan DMA EVA spacesuit. Astronauts/Cosmonauts need special spacesuits and life support systems if they go outside their spacecraft on a spacewalk - otherwise known as Extravehicular Activity (EVA). Each Orlan spacesuit has detachable gloves like these, which complete the spacesuit and make it possible to carryout work in space.

The gloves are made mainly of rubber, aluminium, and a fireproof silica fibre cloth. This is the Russian equivalent of the USA ‘Beta Cloth’. A protective exterior micrometeoroid shell is applied over an inner pressure glove – in the Orlan spacesuit this is a synthetic phenylon material. This exterior micrometeoroid shell protects against the danger of a small piece of space debris travelling at high speed piercing the pressurised spacesuit. Radzimir (a silk based fabric) spreaders prevent the glove from collapsing/deforming under vacuum conditions. Rubberised fingertips provided as much dexterity as was possible at the time in the extreme environment of space.

In 1972 it is believed that Apollo astronaut Michael Collins presented Soviet cosmonaut Vitali Sevastianov with an A7L Apollo spacesuit glove – the same type used for the Moon landings. Sevastianov showed the glove to Guy Severin, the Chief Designer for Russian spacesuits. Severin used the American design in developing prototypes for a Soviet EVA spacesuit, which would go on to become the Orlan series. These Orlan DMA EVA spacesuit gloves have a remarkably similar internal pressure layer to the A7L design.