NASA Advanced Concepts has funded research for a high performance spacesuit for future Mars Astronauts. Dr. Bonnie Dunbar is a former NASA astronaut and is now a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. Some of her fellow astronauts couldn't fit in an Extra Vehicular Activity suit – more commonly known as a spacesuit. Her system will enable a spacesuit tailored to their own specific body. NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program provides $175,000 to fund the research over the next nine months. It doesn't actually utilize high-tech digitized thread to create spacesuits. Instead, it utilizes the "Digital Thread" framework commonly used in the industrial internet of things settings. The best way to describe the "Digital Thread" is to think of it as a piece of data that connects an individual part through all the design, manufacturing, and delivery processes.

Texas A&M will investigate the feasibility of manufacturing "custom" cost-effective high-performance exploration spacesuits for Mars and beyond utilizing the Digital Thread (DT), which integrates digital analytic components for manufacturing in development of the final Spacesuit.