this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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To be clear: to get back to the ground safely, the spacecraft RCS has to operate for no more than about five hours.
As far as I know, this spacecraft is still certified for emergency reentry, and if they needed to, the crew can get in and leave at any time. And they have good confidence that the spacecraft will get them to earth safely.
These delays aimed at getting more data to justify certification as an operational vehicle instead of flight test. If it doesn't work out, the worst case seems to be that a second test flight may be required.
Delays don't really cost NASA anything either. There's plenty of consumables on the station for the crew, and when the capsule is docked the RCS can be shut down so it doesn't leak.
Yeah, reading the article, it sounds like they've decided to park at the space station because the parts that malfunctioned during the journey to the space station were not designed to survive re-entry, meaning that they won't have the opportunity to understand what went wrong with them after they return to Earth. So they're delaying the departure in order to collect as much information as possible about what went wrong in the first part of the mission. They're still confident that a safe return is going to happen.