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