Sarj

So the current plan is to replace all the trundle bearings and clean up the
mess as well as possible, and add grease to the ring. Then hope that they
will find one of the bearings is the fault.
It seems to me that they are at a bit of a loss here so far.
No apparent foreign particles, just metal from the race ring in the main,
mostly the hardened coating. It would have been nice if some debris from
an impact or even something trapped in there from the ground could be
blamed, but thus far its worrying because if its a faulty hardening its
likely to be on the other part as well if they go to the other ring.
If that is the case then they have a problem. No vehicle to take up a new
ring, and its possibly not an on orbit changout possibility anyway. A
slight problem with solar arrays...
Did I hear that there are in fact a couple of folded up Russian solar arrays
up there on the outside of a module? One wonders if there is any place these
could be fixed with the right power controllers to augment the sarj mounted
arrays if rotation has to be minimal for the rest of the life of the
station.

Brian

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Brian Gaff wrote:

So the current plan is to replace all the trundle bearings and clean up
the
mess as well as possible, and add grease to the ring. Then hope that they
will find one of the bearings is the fault.
It seems to me that they are at a bit of a loss here so far.
No apparent foreign particles, just metal from the race ring in the main,
mostly the hardened coating. It would have been nice if some debris from
an impact or even something trapped in there from the ground could be
blamed, but thus far its worrying because if its a faulty hardening its
likely to be on the other part as well if they go to the other ring.
If that is the case then they have a problem. No vehicle to take up a
new ring, and its possibly not an on orbit changout possibility anyway. A
slight problem with solar arrays...
Did I hear that there are in fact a couple of folded up Russian solar
arrays up there on the outside of a module? One wonders if there is any
place these could be fixed with the right power controllers to augment the
sarj mounted arrays if rotation has to be minimal for the rest of the life
of the station.

Brian


Could be poor case hardening, or it could be trundle bearings pinching too
tightly. That thing's buried in covers, they've only gotten spot looks at
it so far. A bunch of grease was applied and scraped off on the current
mission, to be brought back for analysis, as well as a sample of some dust
found on the port SARJ. Hopefully, we will learn more after STS-124 lands.

Mike Ross