Cult Italian fashion house Prada will design the new spacesuits for United States space agency Nasa’s 2025 Moon landing mission, in partnership with commercial space company Axiom Space.

The Artemis III mission will be the first crewed lunar landing since 1972 and the first time a woman sets foot on the Moon, with astronaut Christina Koch on the roster.

In a press release, Axiom Space chief executive officer Michael Suffredini said Prada would bring “technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques and innovative design concepts” to the project.

Prada’s contribution would ensure “not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy space suits”, he added.

Though best known for its runway prowess, the luxury label’s design credits extend to performance wear for the seas. Since the 1990s, Prada has co-designed competition uniforms for the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli sailors – one of the world’s most prestigious sailing teams.

Professor Jeffery Hoffman, who flew five Nasa missions and has carried out four spacewalks, told BBC: “Prada has considerable experience with various types of composite fabrics and may actually be able to make some real technical contributions to the outer layers of the new spacesuit.”

“A spacesuit is really like a miniature spacecraft. It has to provide pressure, oxygen, keep you at a reasonable temperature,” he added.

The jointly designed Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit will build on Nasa’s existing Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit design, said Axiom Space.

In 2019, Nasa cancelled its first all-women spacewalk after it could not find enough medium-sized spacesuits to fit the two female astronauts, Ms Anne McClain and Ms Koch.

The historic spacewalk took place seven months later after Nasa completed the second suit.