This talk is from WIRED by Design, a two-day live magazine event that celebrated all forms of creative problem solving.*

The space suits astronauts wear today are marvels of engineering, but they're far from perfect. For one thing, they're unwieldy. At a weight of nearly 300 pounds, astronauts have to expend a huge amount of energy just to move them around. "It was great for 45 years ago, but we can do better," says Dava Newman.

Newman, an MIT aerospace engineer who was recently nominated for the role of NASA deputy administrator, is working on next-generation suits that would give astronauts far greater mobility—the type of equipment that would be instrumental to a manned mission to Mars. At WIRED by Design, Newman and her partner Gui Trotti showed off one such concept. Dubbed the BioSuit, it would replace today's bulky gas-pressurized get-ups with a form-fitting "soft exoskeleton."

By tapping advanced materials and relying on a mathematically-informed fit, the BioSuit could someday allow astronauts to explore the solar system with unprecedented freedom. As Newman puts it: "It is literally a second-skin suit."

For more on WIRED by Design, visit live.wired.com.