Agreed, the workaround suggests just to skip the orbit application. That should not be needed, since it seems that the orbit files are available but in the wrong place.
Looking at https ://step.esa.int/auxdata/orbits/Sentinel-1/POEORB/S1A/2024/12/ I can see that the new orbit files keep getting uploaded to 2024/12 folder instead of 2025/01:
so I’m increasingly convinced that the issue lies in syncing those files to SNAP site.