Pressure Suit, Manned Orbiting Laboratory, MD-3, Prototype

This is a spacesuit that the David Clark Company made for the United Stated Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program in the mid-1960s. At the time, the USAF had planned an independent program for which they had recruited their own corps of pilot astronauts. MOL astronauts were to take part in surveillance and reconnaissance from a space station that orbited above Earth. As robotic equipment outstripped the capabilities of human-tended spying, the USAF abandoned plans and transferred all equipment and their astronaut corps to NASA. The spacesuits are rare pieces of hardware that have survived the secretive MOL program. All MOL astronauts who were under age 35 and survived eventually flew in NASA programs, either on board Skylab or the space shuttle.

NASA Johnson Space Center transferred this spacesuit to the museum at the end of the Apollo program.