The reprogramming occurred after engineers had confirmed by Thursday last week that neither satelitte's reaction control subsystems nor main and back up earth sensors were to blame for the sudden loss of control soon after launch. The reprogramming took place on December 8, following a shutdown of the satelite's primary attitude control systems on November 29.

The latest reports say the mission is now in a better position of succeeding, after early fears of another ETS-6, where Japan had the dubious honor of using a half billion dollar satellite to expore the Van Allen Belts after the geo-transfer engine failed.

Launched on Nov 28 onboard the H2, initial problems with ETS-7 were traced to the satellite being positioned backwards in orbit. Next, the solar array began going wrong, followed by fault checking software for the attitude control. Last week, NASDA begun a major investigation directing a trouble-shooting team to resolve the problems now.