Athena

Historical Summary

Development of the Lockheed Launch Vehicle (LLV) family was announced by Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in May 1993. Lockheed had designed and produced fleet ballistics missiles for the U.S. Navy for decades. It wanted to use its experience with solid rockets in the commercial space launch services market. LLV was to be developed entirely with commercial funding, making it the first space launch vehicle to be developed without government funding or up front government launch contracts. Lockheed was supported in part by its teammates for the project: Thiokol, Pratt & Whitney, and Primex. No customers had committed to buy launch services, but Lockheed hoped to find a customer and fly the demonstration launch vehicle (DLV) by late 1994.

The launch of DLV, an Athena I model, occurred in August 1995. It carried Gemstar, a small commercial satellite to demonstrate LEO communications. Shortly after launch, flammable hydraulic fluid expended from the nozzle actuators was caught up in the airstream and began to recirculate around the base of the launch vehicle. The fluid burned, overheating the control cables and causing the first-stage TVC system to fail. Shortly thereafter, the IMU power supply arced, causing the IMU to lose its alignment. As a result, DLV was destroyed by the range safety officer. The summer and fall of 1995 was a bad time for the new small commercial launch vehicles. The second flight of the Pegasus XL had failed in June, and the Conestoga, a small launch vehicle built by EER Systems, failed in its maiden flight on 23 October.

Fortunately, Athena had accumulated a small backlog of launch orders by the time of the DLV failure, and this gave the program enough momentum to overcome the failure. The backlog included the Lewis and Clark satellites for NASA, the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, a pair of Ikonos commercial remote sensing satellites, and the ROCSAT satellite for Taiwan. Lockheed Martin spent two years investigating the failure, examining the rest of the launch vehicle for other failure modes, and modifying the design. As a result of the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, the program also moved from Lockheed facilities in Sunnyvale, California, to Denver, Colorado, where the rest of Lockheed Martin’s space launch vehicle business is based. Athena I successfully returned to flight in August 1997 carrying NASA’s Lewis satellite. This was followed in January 1998 by the first launch of an Athena II carrying the Lunar Prospector spacecraft.

In September 2001, Athena performed the first orbital launch from Kodiak, Alaska. The mission, designated Kodiak Star, was conducted on behalf of NASA and deployed four small satellites belonging to NASA and the U.S. Air Force into two different orbits.

Originally planned to launch up to 12 flights per year, the Athena program has averaged only about one launch annually because the boom in small satellites anticipated during the 1990s did not materialize. The difficulties that Athena and other small launch systems have had in finding customers are reflected in the history of the Athena II “white tail.” In 1996 the U.S. Air Force selected an Athena II to launch the demonstration satellite SBIRS-LADS. The spacecraft program was cancelled in early 1999, leaving a nearly complete rocket without a customer—what aircraft builders call a white tail. Later, the white tail was selected to launch a commercial imaging satellite, but the potential customer was unable to raise sufficient funding to sign a firm contract. In 2000, the vehicle was ordered by Blastoff!, a start-up company planning a commercial lunar landing mission. The company went out of business when internet and technology stocks crashed later that year, wiping out its sponsors’ funding. Marketing efforts continued with several other potential customers, without success. The last launch in Athena’s backlog, the Kodiak Star mission, was completed in late 2001. With no additional orders on the books, the program went into hibernation leaving only a small staff to continue program management and marketing efforts.