NASA Announces Next Generation Spacecraft

May 25, 2011

Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space mission.

NASA has unveiled plans for its next-generation, post-Shuttle spacecraft to carry humans into earth orbit and beyond. The state-of-the-art, four-astronaut capsule, called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle or MPCV, builds on earlier designs for the Orion crew capsule. And the versatile new craft features an enhanced emphasis on crew safety.

NASA Associate Administrator Douglas Cooke says it made sense to stick with Orion, a survivor of the recently-cancelled Constellation program that had aimed to return astronauts to the moon.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on Orion. We have a ground test article that is a full structure with a lot of the systems actually installed into it for testing. So, it’s well down the road. It answers the requirements and represents a significant investment in that path at this point," he said.

The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle being assembled and tested at Lockheed Martin's Vertical Testing Facility in Colorado.

The Obama Administration cancelled the Constellation program in 2010 because it was behind schedule and over budget. Tariq Malik is managing editor of Space.com, an online newsletter. He says that while it could be used as a replacement for the retiring Space Shuttle fleet, that is not NASA’s intent. Rather, Malik says, the redesigned capsule is the space agency’s all-purpose vehicle for a variety of missions beyond earth’s orbit.