Derek Lyons wrote:
When the thrusters were not supposed to ever be used again - and
indeed were supposed (IIRC) to be permanently deactivated years ago...
Then something is up and/or wrong when they test them 'to see if they
work'.


It is the thrusters on Zarya (FGB) that were de-activated when Zvezda
came long with its own thrusters.

Zvezda's thrusters are theoretically supposed to remain functional for
the lifetime of the station. From what I recall, they are rated for a
certain number of hours of operations as opposed to years in space. So
using Progress engines instead of Zvezda,s lengthens the time Zvezda's
thrusters remain functional.

Perhaps they should be testing them are more frequent intervals. But
this time, they tested them, found a problem and now we have to wait to
see if they can solve the problem or not.

I don't think you can fault anyone for this at this point in time. We
have to wait to see how they react in the event they cannot fix the thruster.