"We're ready to put them to work and get ready to put bootprints back on the moon, " says Glenn Lutz, NASA's project manager for Extravehicular Activity Systems at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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The designs free up space in center consoles for storage space and controllers that operate multimedia systems.

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Because new technology has flourished since then, scientists could discover that some new systems are also at risk, said Jeffrey Hughes, director of the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling at Boston University.

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