From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishspace capsuleˈspace ˌcapsule noun [countable] TTSthe part of a spacecraft that carries people into space to obtain information and then comes back to Earth
Examples from the Corpus
space capsule• A door at the rear of the room led to a bathroom that looked like it would fit into a space capsule.• One modern example is a space capsule in orbit around the earth; another is a capsule falling radially toward the Earth.• A closed-loop system constantly recycles the same materials over and over again, just as Bio2 does or a space capsule should. 