Lockheed Martin has announced that a group of Air Force and Aerospace Corp. experts has approved the company's software fix for the Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs). So, the company is once again confident problems designing and building the first of this series of new missile warning systems for geosynchronous orbit are overcome.

This troubled program has been the poster child of how not to do business -- a result of bad management on the government's part and overeager processes at Lockheed Martin. Despite the problems, the first Sbirs payload, in HEO orbit for nearly two years now, is said to be performing well. And, HEO-2 is up and officially turned on and undergoing checkout.

Maybe Sbirs is in the clear now. But, as with this program's troubled history, progress isn't without cost. The price for Sbirs has risen from nearly $10 billion to about $11.6 billion because of the software fix and the addition of a fourth geosynchronous spacecraft to the Pentagon's buy.

The fix was needed for a set of circumstances that are widely acknowledged to be highly unlikely, but avoidable.

Sbirs software had in it the inherent problem of improper timing for functions handled by different onboard processors. And, if the timing of those functions was misaligned during a certain unlikely set of circumstances on orbit, the satellite could go dark without a chance of recovery. Safe-hold software is designed to direct a spacecraft to process basic flight functions in the event of an on orbit problem; it directs the satellite to point its solar array properly for power and point its command and control antenna to the ground to await instructions. However, similar software had a on orbit problem, allegedly in the wayward satellite that the Pentagon knocked out of the sky in February.

Delivery of GEO-1 is now set for late 2009, and it looks like there may be a slight slip to that launch ...