Washington – April 26, 1999 – The first launch to Earth orbit from the Alaskan spaceport at Kodiak Island will be a Athena I launch vehicle boosting a NASA Earth science satellite.
The launch, set for August of next year, will make Lockheed Martin's Athena vehicles the most flexible space booster available to small customers, with launching options from Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, Wallops Island, Virginia, and now Alaska.
The mission will launch the NASA Vegetation Canopy Lidar satellite
using an Athena I variant, the smallest vehicle in the Athena fleet.
Launch target is a 261 mile high orbit inclined 67 degrees to the
Equator.
The satellite, which will be the sole payload on the launcher,
weighs just 954 pounds. The mission marks the third use of an Athena
bird by a NASA customer.
Previous missions for Athena 1 include the Lunar Prospector and the failed Lewis spacecraft. Its companion satellite, Clark, was also set for an Athena launch before NASA killed the project. It is the
Clark Athena rocket that will be used in the VCL mission.
