Falcon Heavy's Payload in BIG TROUBLE! What the heck NASA Is Doing???

Falcon Heavy's Payload in BIG TROUBLE! What the heck NASA Is Doing???
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Falcon Heavy's Payload in BIG TROUBLE! What the heck NASA Is Doing???
Falcon Heavy will not launch this year anymore!
This is a harsh but unavoidable truth.
Why is that?
Let’s find out on today’s episode of Alpha Tech:
The year 2023 has been a fantastic year for the Falcon rocket family, not only for Falcon 9 but especially for Falcon Heavy, with a record number of launches in a year, totaling 5 impressive launches. These launches have demonstrated the rocket's reliability and capability in handling complex and diverse payloads. And this makes rocket enthusiasts like us look forward to a similar or even greater breakthrough in 2024.
However, reality always brings disappointment! Besides the most recent launch on June 26, there will be no more Falcon Heavy launches from now until the end of the year. This means that Falcon Heavy has only executed its first and only launch in 2024. This scenario is similar to SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launches in 2018 and 2022.
So, what happened to Falcon Heavy?
Falcon Heavy's Payload in BIG TROUBLE! What the heck NASA Is Doing???
First, we must affirm that the recent failure of Falcon 9 is not the cause of the delays or cancellations of future Falcon Heavy missions, but rather the issues with the missions themselves.
The highly anticipated mission initially scheduled for October on Falcon Heavy, the Europa Clipper spacecraft, is in a precarious situation.
The Europa Clipper mission has encountered critical delays due to problems with the spacecraft's transistors. These components were found to fail at lower radiation doses than anticipated, raising concerns given the intense magnetic fields around Jupiter, which are 20,000 times stronger than Earth's. This issue, detected late in the development process, poses a substantial risk to the spacecraft’s systems. NASA has initiated a preliminary analysis to resolve the problem by the end of July, but the tight timeline makes it challenging to address the issue thoroughly. As a result, the launch may be postponed to 2025 or 2026, potentially increasing costs and delaying the mission's scientific goals.
With this outcome, Falcon Heavy has missed its second mission.
Falcon Heavy's Payload in BIG TROUBLE! What the heck NASA Is Doing???
Next, another mission for Falcon Heavy at the end of the year is Griffin Mission One VIPER, but its fate is even more catastrophic than the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA recently canceled this mission due to escalating costs, which had surged to $450 million. This decision was influenced by delays in the development process and budget constraints. Originally set for 2023, the mission had already been pushed back to 2024, further inflating costs by over 30% to the latest estimate of $609.6 million.
NASA's teleconference on July 17 revealed that the cancellation would save the agency $84 million. This figure could increase if the VIPER launch continued to be delayed until November 2025.
Most of the science that VIPER would conduct will be carried out by other missions, including landers and orbiters. However, the mobility that VIPER provides might not be available until NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle, a rover for crewed Artemis missions that can also be remotely operated, is delivered later this decade.
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