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Check Out SpaceX's New Spacesuit: Elon Musk Shares on Instagram

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Now we know what SpaceX's new spacesuit looks like from head to toe.

"Astronaut spacesuit next to Crew Dragon," Musk wrote in the post.

In an Instagram post late last month, Musk gave the world its first glimpse of the sleek, black-and-white SpaceX spacesuit. But that photo was a waist-up view of an astronaut strapped inside a Crew Dragon.

SpaceX holds a NASA contract to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS. (The company already makes resupply runs to the orbiting lab for NASA, using the robotic, cargo version of Dragon.) The first crewed test flights are scheduled to begin next summer.

Boeing also won a NASA ISS crew contract; the first crewed test flights of the aerospace giant's CST-100 Dreamliner capsule could begin by August 2018, NASA officials have said.

Boeing's spacesuits are more colorful than those of SpaceX; the "Boeing Blue" suits were unveiled earlier this year. [See photos of Boeing's new spacesuits]

NASA has been dependent on Russian Soyuz vehicles to take its astronauts to and from the ISS since 2011, when the agency's space shuttle fleet was retired. (The shuttle flight suits, as you may recall, were orange.)

The above-mentioned suits are all designed to help keep astronauts safe in the event of an emergency during flight. The big, bulky spacesuits made specifically for spacewalks — "extravehicular mobility units," in NASA parlance — are already aboard the ISS.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Space.com Senior Writer
Michael was a science writer for the Idaho National Laboratory and has been an intern at Wired.com, The Salinas Californian newspaper, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He has also worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.