Engineers are racing to fix a failed piece of equipment on NASA’s future deep-space capsule Orion ahead of its first flight to space. It may require months of work to replace and fix. Engineers at NASA and Orion’s primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, are trying to figure out the best way to fix the component.

In early November, engineers at Lockheed Martin noticed that a power component inside the vehicle had failed. The component is within one of the spacecraft’s eight power and data units, or PDUs.

Nasa plans to launch an uncrewed Orion capsule on top of a rocket called the space launch system, or SLS. To test out both of these systems’ capabilities, NASA will launch the capsule on the rocket’s first flight in late 2021. The capsule is a critical part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the next man to the moon by 2024.

Nasa had planned to transfer the Orion capsule to a processing facility on December 7th. That rollout may be postponed due to this issue.

‘while the PDU is still fully operational, we are swiftly trouble shooting the card while also continuing close-out activities on Orion,’ a representative for Lockheed Martin said.’we are fully committed to seeing Orion launch next year on its historic Artemis I mission to the moon.’.

To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing.

Engineers would have to tunnel through the adapter’s exterior by removing some of the outer panels of the adapter to get to the PDU. The panels were n’t designed to be removed this way, but this scenario may take up to four months to complete.

The PDU failed in such a way that it lost redundancy within the unit, so it can still function. Lockheed Martin and NASA could fly the Orion capsule as is.

The SLS was supposed to fly for the first time in 2017 but has n’t done so yet. A key test of the rocket coming up at the end of the year has been pushed back.

Nasa is hoping to land astronauts on the moon by 2024. Although many experts are skeptical that such a mission can be pulled off in time.