A SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station has been pushed back to no earlier than July 11 after teams discovered elevated vapor levels of propellant. [...]
Following additional inspections and testing of the Dragon spacecraft, the investigators managed to identify the source of the leak as being a faulty Draco thruster valve inlet joint, which controls the flow of propellant. [...]
This marks the second delay for the cargo resupply mission, the first delay being announced on June 6. The first delay happened after ground teams detected elevated vapor readings of mono-methyl hydrazine while loading the propellant, forcing them to stand down from the launch attempt. [...]
The NASA and SpaceX partnership continues to be a strong one. The space agency recently bought five additional Crew Dragon flights to the ISS after NASA's other commercial partner, Boeing, failed to deliver its own crew vehicle on schedule. The recent glitch with Crew Dragon, it's fair to say, likely won't have much of a bearing on this fruitful working relationship.
Previously: NASA and SpaceX Stand Down on Dragon Launch to Study Hydrazine Issue
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday June 17 2022, @06:00PM (1 child)
You're very welcome. Here's the source article: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-nasa-cargo-dragon-crs-25-delay-update/ [teslarati.com]
You pose the correct questions, and we hope they looked into everything. I'm surprised they'd have a problem like this- didn't we (tech world) learn these things long ago?
Very interesting re: locking wire. They're nice to keep things from coming off, but they don't guarantee proper torque. In fact, if drilled through nut and stud, you can't adjust torque- you have to replace nut and stud and start over.
"Goo": again, with Loctite or other thread lockers- you can't check / re-torque. You might be able to thoroughly clean threads and start over, but maybe not. And it prevents you from knowing if the the thing relaxed somehow, as would be expected with normal gasket deformation ("cold flow"). Better to replace nut and stud.
Double-nut might be a better way to go, with the 2nd locking nut being a crimped / locking nut.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @05:59PM
Stuff breaks, and rocket launches involve some pretty rough handling. The critical lesson is the necessity of regular inspections and maintenance, such as what found this leak. As long as they find and fix the problems on the ground I'd say they have things well in hand.