Bloom Skin is a speculative spaceflight suit that transforms the paradigm of astronautical protection into a poetic instrument of ecological futurity. Inspired by the interlocking geometries of armadillo scales, pine cone fibers, and pangolin armor, the suit unfolds through origami-like engineering: pliable petals that remain closed under gravity and bloom open in microgravity. The suit reimagines the astronaut’s body as ark, an entangled vessel and mobile biome, the locus of intentional terraforming.

It advances a design philosophy in which spacefaring bodies extend their ecological relations across planetary thresholds. Each embedded seed embodies a companion species selected for its adaptive intelligence, ecological memory, and cultural significance. These seeds initiate forms of cohabitation that emerge through slowness, dispersal, and atmospheric reciprocity. The suit operates as a soft architecture for planetary care carrying forward cosmologies, ecosystems, and ancestral futures. Through this wearable terrain, Bloom Skin articulates a vision of terraforming as shared settlement, where kinship structures planetary possibility. This project is scheduled to fly in the New Shepard Mission Dec 2025, thanks to the generous support of the MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative.