Exosphere (NASA)
The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle In 2011, NASA unveiled a new deep-space vehicle called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). NASA officials plan for the Vehicle is for it to send astronauts on voyages to an asteroid and then eventually onto Mars. The idea for this vehicle came from an earlier idea for another spaceship. The designs that the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle are based on was originally designed for was the Orion spaceship but unfortunately it was part of NASA Constellation program which has now been canceled (Wall). With the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, NASA hopes to aspire to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and also have crewed Mars missions by the 2030’s. The fastest way to accomplish these goals are by sticking with the Orion design and just working off of the original design. This is a very exciting new chapter for NASA because it creates opportunities to explore a part of the exosphere that has not been discovered yet (Wall). Now, for a list of facts regarding the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. First, the Vehicle is gumdrop shaped. In the first picture, you can see how the MPCV is gumdrop shaped. It is about sixteen feet wide at its base and and narrows going upwards. The vehicle weighs twenty-three tons which in comparison is similar to the weight of three elephants. It only has three hundred and sixteen feet of habitable space and it will be able to carry four astronauts at a time. When the Vehicle returns to Earth and needs to land it will land in a series of splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean. According to Dictionary.com, splashdowns are the landing of a space vehicle in a body of water (Dictionary.com). This spacecraft is especially important to NASA because it will be the primary vehicle to bring astronauts to destinations “beyond low-Earth orbit, such as asteroids or Mars (Wall).” These type of journeys can take months and it would not be reasonable for the four astronauts to be so crammed inside so instead the Vehicle will
Bibliography: "Orion Overview Fact Sheet." NASA. NASA, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2013. "Splashdown." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2013. Wall, Mike. "NASA Unveils New Spaceship for Deep Space Exploration." Space.com. Tech Media Network, 24 May 2011. Web. 17 Sept. 2013.