NASA has decided it’s too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule. They’ll have to wait until February for a ride home with SpaceX.
Will probably perform just fine. NASA update a couple weeks back covered results for multiple test firings of the thrusters to solve what was going on during approach. They all worked fine. Some at only 2-3% off peak performance window versus the 20% off that had been measured. So whatever tinkering had been going on seemed to have worked.
One curiosity they’ll never be sure on was if seals were truly restricting fuel flow. That potentially the long wait time from stacking everything to launch caused swelling. And now in space that swelling has gone down which is why fuel flow has been fine. But the thruster module they would need to inspect gets left in space before re-entry. So we’ll never know for sure.
Will probably perform just fine. NASA update a couple weeks back covered results for multiple test firings of the thrusters to solve what was going on during approach. They all worked fine. Some at only 2-3% off peak performance window versus the 20% off that had been measured. So whatever tinkering had been going on seemed to have worked.
One curiosity they’ll never be sure on was if seals were truly restricting fuel flow. That potentially the long wait time from stacking everything to launch caused swelling. And now in space that swelling has gone down which is why fuel flow has been fine. But the thruster module they would need to inspect gets left in space before re-entry. So we’ll never know for sure.