It will be one giant leap for space fashion. Scientists funded by Nasa are designing a skin-tight space suit to replace the ungainly “Michelin man” look that has defined the image of the astronaut for 40 years.

Instead of the familiar awkward, swaying gait, astronauts will be able to move far more nimbly during space walks or on the surface of the moon or Mars.

They may even be able to run or jump in the BioSuit, being designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and intended to be ready in three years. The suit will weigh only 40lb, compared with today’s 300lb, allowing astronauts to carry out experiments and repairs to satellites more quickly and easily.

Scientists at the project have already tested prototypes in laboratory vacuum conditions and hope the suit will be in use well before America’s return to the moon, planned for about 2018, followed by a possible manned mission to Mars. A Nasa probe designed to drill for signs of past life on the red planet blasted off yesterday, and should arrive next May.

Professor Dava Newman, the space scientist at MIT who is leading the project, said: “The current Nasa suit has 14 layers, so you’re in a gas-pressurised shell . . . a balloon with multiple layers. It’s very difficult to work.”

Early versions of space suits were developed in the 1960s by both America and the Soviet Union from flying overalls worn by high-altitude bomber pilots, and today’s models look much the same.

The suits must protect the body from temperatures ranging between 135C in the sunlight and -82C in the shade, and from strikes by debris. To pressurise conventional suits against the vacuum of space, gas is pumped into them to atmospheric pressure.

The new suit relies on a rigid, web-like skeleton to exert pressure, reinforced by a tightly drawn fabric of nylon, spandex and “shape-memory polymer”. The astronaut’s head will still be contained in a separate helmet filled with oxygen.

Kevin Fong, a British specialist in space medicine at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said: “This will be like having a scuba suit in space.”

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