Crew Return Vehicle

The Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), sometimes referred to as the Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV), is the proposed lifeboat or escape module for the International Space Station (ISS). A number of different vehicles and designs have been considered over the past two decades – with several flying as developmental test prototypes – but no one single design has been built as the dedicated CRV. In April 2010, President Obama directed NASA to develop a CRV based on the Orion technology.

In the original space station design, emergencies were intended to be dealt with by having a "safe area" on the station that the crew could evacuate to, pending a rescue from a U.S. Space Shuttle. However, the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the subsequent grounding of the shuttle fleet caused station planners to rethink this concept. Planners foresaw the need for a CRV to address three specific scenarios:

• Crew return if a space shuttle or Soyuz capsule was unavailable;
• An escape vehicle from a major time-critical space station emergency;
• Full or partial crew return in case of a medical emergency.