Astronauts of the future may not need to dust off their spacesuits. Engineers at Boeing are designing self-cleaning versions based on carbon nanotube technology.

“Spacesuits are one of the first things that come to your mind when you think about human space exploration,” says Kavya Manyapu, a Flight Crew Operations and Test Engineer for Starliner Spacecraft at Boeing. But existing spacesuits are not ideally suited for working on the surface of the moon or Mars.

Dust was a big problem for astronauts on the various NASA Apollo missions. …