NASA x adidas UltraBoost 20 Infant 'Dash Grey'
Colorway: Dash Grey/Silver Metallic/Halo Silver · Style code: FZ2928 · Release date: December 31, 2020 · Price: $2832 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: NASA x adidas UltraBoost 20 'Dash Grey' (FX7957) · NASA x adidas UltraBoost DNA 'Black Carbon' (FZ1855) · NASA x adidas UltraBoost DNA 'Football Blue' (FX7973) · NASA x adidas UltraBoost DNA 'Halo Silver' (FX7972) · NASA x adidas UltraBoost 20 'Football Blue' (FX7978)
In 2019 adidas announced a multi-year partnership with the US National Laboratory aboard the International Space Station, with a stated aim of studying how Boost pellets fuse together when gravity is not pulling on them during the moulding process. The Ultraboost 20 launched alongside that announcement in December, carrying a space patch on the tongue and a Primeknit upper made with Tailored Fiber Placement, a technique laying reinforcing fibres along specific stress lines instead of knitting the whole upper uniformly. Which makes the infant version a slightly absurd object: an orbital research programme translated into a shoe for someone who cannot yet walk unaided. Kids' sizing routinely inherits the adult colour story with none of the engineering behind it, and dash grey over dark tooling is the grown-up palette shrunk down. The science was real; at this size it is a graphic.