CMS Terra Nova

The CMS Terra Nova was a Sovereign Colonies mass driver, the largest vessel in the fleet that carried the S.C.A.F. expedition to Tau Volantis in 2311. Left derelict among the orbiting flotilla after the expedition collapsed, it lay abandoned for two hundred years until Isaac Clarke and John Carver passed through it, and later until the remnants of the Unitologist Circle turned it into a temple to the Brethren Moons. (Dead Space 3; Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Service at Tau Volantis#

The Terra Nova was used by the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces during their expedition to Tau Volantis in 2311. Her commanding officer was Valery Dietz and she was piloted by Tucker Edwards. During the excavation of the frozen world, Necromorph specimens and Markers recovered from the planet were stored aboard her alongside the bodies of dead S.C.A.F. soldiers, a practice Commander Dietz opposed, wanting the specimens transferred off her ship. The Markers brought aboard spread the same dementia that had doomed every other Marker site, and tensions rose among a crew already strained by managing constant shuttle flights to and from the dig sites. (Dead Space 3)

Most of the Terra Nova's crew were killed during the cleanse order issued by General Spencer Mahad in 2314, and those who survived the purge were slaughtered by the Necromorph lifeform carried up from the planet. The ship was left adrift among the rest of the flotilla in orbit around Tau Volantis. (Dead Space 3)

Design#

The Terra Nova was a CL-13 class spaceship classified as an ADT 60 Mass Driver, serving in the Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces' AC-P fleet. As the largest ship in her fleet she acted as a cargo and resupply vessel, a hub for shuttle operations, and a carrier for the smaller craft stowed inside her cradle. (Dead Space 3)

The ship was built around three major sections, Fore, the Conning Tower, and Aft, linked by an internal tram. Working with limited technology, her builders crammed cargo into every available space, including access corridors and overhead storage. The most distinctive feature was the cradle, enclosed by seven pairs of extensible arms that clamped onto and ferried smaller ships; cargo shuttles entered the cradle to unload, transferring their bundles to guide rails that ran alongside the tram. The Fore section housed the bridge, ship communications, the primary cargo bays, filtration controls, and cradle operations. (Dead Space 3)

Arrival of Isaac Clarke#

Two hundred years after the expedition, Isaac Clarke traveled to the derelict Terra Nova to repair the CMS Crozier, which lay in the Aft Station. He fought his way through the ship's many sections against the mummified remains of the crew to reach the tram system, where the survivor Austin Buckell directed him toward a supply cache in the Conning Tower near the Mid Station. There Isaac contended with traps that the pilot Tucker Edwards had set centuries earlier, having sealed himself in the Conning Tower during the slaughter of the crew. After surviving the traps and finding Edwards' corpse, Isaac made his way to the Aft Station and began repairs on the Crozier, eventually freeing a shuttle and returning to the CMS Roanoke. The Terra Nova was left in orbit with the rest of the flotilla as the team launched aboard the Crozier to land on Tau Volantis. (Dead Space 3)

The Unitologist cult and the return to Earth#

After Isaac and Carver escaped Tau Volantis in a stolen shuttle, they reached the Terra Nova to find that most of the surviving members of the Circle had gone insane and formed a radical Unitologist cult that had made the ship their church. The Unitologists who remained sane, among them Randall Carr, had tried to jury-rig a ShockPoint Drive from one of their shuttles to the ship's reactor in order to fly the Terra Nova back to Earth, but they were killed by the cult before they could finish. Isaac and Carver took up the work, restarted the engines and overloaded them far beyond their designed parameters to feed enough power to the drive, then entered ShockSpace and returned to Earth. They arrived to find that the Brethren Moons had already reached the planet and were attacking it. One of the Moons rose in front of the Terra Nova and seemingly crashed into it, leaving the ship's fate unknown. (Dead Space 3: Awakened)