There’s a lot more than what AutoTL;DR reported. The article is by Stephen Clark, who now swaps out with Eric Berger on the weekly roundup article for ArsTechnica.
Yeah this is a really nice article. It’s easy to make fun of Boeing, but valves really are tricky in these conditions. Key is to be able to iterate quickly, and it sounds like NASA is happy with SpaceX in that regard.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX and NASA managers met Monday for a flight readiness review, a customary milestone before every crew launch, to deliberate on any problems that could affect the upcoming mission.
NASA and SpaceX officials gave the green light Monday to proceed with preparations to launch the Crew-7 mission Friday, but only after formally signing off on several technical issues.
One of those involved a drogue parachute that took longer than anticipated to fully inflate on a Dragon crew capsule returning from the space station earlier this year.
There was no effect on the Dragon resupply mission because the valve in question is only used if there’s a problem elsewhere in the propulsion system, when it would close or isolate a leaky thruster to avoid losing propellant.
A test flight of Boeing’s delay-stricken Starliner crew capsule, which still hasn’t flown with astronauts, was grounded in 2021 after engineers discovered stuck valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system just hours before launch.
Inspections revealed corrosion in the valves caused by moisture mixing with vapors of nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer used for maneuvering thrusters on both Starliner and Crew Dragon.
The original article contains 1,157 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
