Nasa space shuttle drawing
With all the uncertainty surrounding the SLS, Cooke declined to venture a guess about when the MPCV could start carrying crews for the first time. "We will be working toward solutions and final decisions on the launch vehicle in the coming weeks, and are still shooting for the earliest possible dates in the early summer for completing that," he said. That decision should come soon, according to Cooke. That's not likely to happen, however, as NASA officials have yet to settle on a final design for the rocket.
Last year, Congress instructed the agency to have the spaceship and the SLS ready to go by 2016. It will lift off aboard the Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket that NASA is also developing, agency officials said. But the cancellation of the Constellation program nixed the Ares vehicles, so things are different for the MPCV. The Orion space capsule was originally designed to launch on NASA's Ares 1 rocket, with a larger heavy-lift rocket called Ares 5 planned to launch moon landers and other deep space flight hardware. "It's basically overkill for that type of mission, but it could do that," Cooke said.Ĭutaway view of the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle. Though its chief calling is roaming far afield, the spaceship may also be called upon to deliver cargo and crew to the International Space Station from time to time. And astronauts aboard the MPCV will be able to perform spacewalks, officials said. The MPCV will be capable of performing a variety of in-space activities, such as rendezvousing and docking with other craft. The space shuttle has no such capability. Much of this improved safety comes from a launch-abort system, which can steer the crew away from its rocket in case anything goes wrong during liftoff, Cooke said. The MPCV is designed to be 10 times safer during launch, re-entry and landing than its predecessor, the space shuttle, NASA officials said. "You wouldn't expect a crew to live in this for long periods of time," Cooke said. Rather, the capsule will meet up with some type of habitation module in space, making the trip much more comfortable. Such journeys would take months, and the four astronauts won't be cooped up in the cramped MPCV the entire time. The spacecraft will be NASA's primary vehicle for delivering astronauts to destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, such as asteroids or Mars. It's designed to carry four astronauts at a time and return to Earth with splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
The space capsule will have a pressurized volume of 690 cubic feet (20 cubic meters), with 316 cubic feet (9 cubic m) of habitable space, according to an official description. The gumdrop-shaped MPCV is about 16.5 feet (5 m) wide at its base and weighs about 23 tons.
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So far, NASA has already invested a little more than $5 billion in the spaceship, which is pretty far along, Cooke said.įor example, Lockheed has already built a full-size mock-up vehicle, called a Ground Test Article, and will soon subject it to a series of rigorous trials at a facility in Colorado. Lockheed Martin Corp., NASA's prime contractor for Orion, will continue work to develop the MPCV spacecraft. The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle being assembled and tested at Lockheed Martin's Vertical Testing Facility in Colorado (Image credit: Lockheed Martin)