Wool & NASA

International Wool Textile Organisation

After a 1.4-million-mile mission beyond the Moon and back, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission arrived back at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on 30 December 2022. On board was wool air filter technology developed by New Zealand-based Lanaco.

Wool was used in the emergency life support system on Orion, and some of Lanaco's high-performance wool-based EcoStatic filters were also on board. The big difference between Lanaco and other filtration systems around the world is its exceptional Helix™ filter technology.

Lanaco’s Helix™ technology was selected by NASA in 2019 for emergency escape hood filtration for critical life support on the current Artemis manned moon missions. In this application, which faces challenges such as hot toxic particulates, and water mist and droplets, the technology uniquely extended the operating window of the filters by nearly sevenfold.

Artemis I was a major step forward as part of NASA’s lunar exploration efforts and sets the stage for the next mission of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion to fly crew around the Moon on Artemis II.

In the image here, Orion, complete with Lanaco filters on board, were at the maximum distance from Earth.