UND’s final Space Studies colloquium features space suit designer and manufacturer

The Space Studies Spring 2021 Colloquium Series has featured several leading experts in various space-related fields.

Please join us for the final presentation in this series, which will feature Ted Southern, President of Final Frontier Design, who will present “Advanced Topics for Extravehicular Activities” from 5-7 p.m. Monday, May 3, online.

Ted Southern is the president and co-founder of Final Frontier Design (FFD), a spacesuit design and manufacturing company based in Brooklyn, New York. He manages teams of up to 12 from project proposal to completion and delivery, with both NASA and the commercial space industry.

FFD was formed from a successful partnership in NASA’s 2009 Astronaut Glove Competition, together with his co-founder, Nikolay Moiseev. Southern has served as principal investigator for 6 NASA SBIR contracts between 2011-2020 for space suit component development, including pressurized gloves, arm mobility joints, and radiation protection for spacesuits. He has published his reports on pressurized gloves in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine (ASEM) and the International Conference on Environmental Systems. Southern was the PI for a fixed price contract to develop next-generation Mechanical Counter Pressure Gloves for NASA, and for a NASA-sponsored microgravity flight campaign (via the Flight Opportunities Program) in 2017. In addition, Ted has overseen a 6 year Space Act Agreement with NASA to human rate FFD’s IVA spacesuit. He is currently managing development of a complete internal EVA space suit system and multiple fixed-price contracts with NASA for their Lunar xEMU EVA spacesuit.

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