Athena 1c

In the second half of the 1980s, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin ), as the chief developer of a number of submarine-based ballistic missiles (UGM-27 Polaris , UGM-73 Poseidon and Trident ), began studying the project of re-equipping their rockets to realize the possibility of launching spacecraft ^[3] .

In 1993, Lockheed announced plans to create a family of LLV launch vehicles ( Lockheed Launch Vehicle ), in 1995 the new launch vehicles were called LMLV ( Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle ), and later received their own name - Athena ". The first three models of the family were intended to launch cargoes weighing 1–4 tons into low Earth orbit at a launch cost of 14–20 million dollars (in 1993 prices) ^[4] .

The main element of Athena missiles was the Castor-120 universal solid-fuel engine , created by Thiokol on the basis of the first stage of the MX intercontinental ballistic missile ( ICBM ). The total cost of developing a new rocket engine amounted to about $ 50 million (in 1993 prices).

The Athena-1 three-stage launch vehicle with a height of 20 m is equipped with the Castor-120 solid propellant rocket engine (RDTT) in the first stage, the Castor-30 solid propellant rocket engine in the second stage and the OAM liquid booster unit (abbr. From English Orbit Adjust Module ), developed by Olin Aerospace, as a third-stage engine. The OAM booster was intended for the direct delivery of payload to the working orbit. In addition, with its help, the position of the rocket along the roll channel at the stage of operation of the lower stages is controlled, as well as its stabilization in passive sections of the flight ^[5] .

For the spatial orientation of the rocket, six engines with a thrust of 11.3 kg are used, and the additions provide four LRE thrust of 22.6 kg, oriented along the axis of the launch vehicle. All engines of the third stage are single-component, hydrazine is used as fuel, which is supplied from tanks with a capacity of 59 kg under a pressure of 31 atm . Depending on the flight tasks, from 2 to 6 fuel tanks can be installed in the third stage unit, as a result of which the mass of the stage varies from 617 to 818 kg ^[5] .

The launch of the Athena-1s launch vehicle was carried out from three cosmodromes:

• Launch pad LC-1 commercial spaceport Kodiak , located on the island of the same name off the coast of Alaska ;
• Launch pad LC-46 of the commercial private spaceport Cosmoport Florida , formed by the state of Florida at the US Air Force Base at Cape Canaveral ;
• Launch pad SLC-6 at the spaceport at the US Air Force Base " Vandenberg ", located in the district of Santa Barbara ( California ).

• Antares
• Athena
• Comparison of mid-range launch vehicles
• Athena 2c
• Minotaur

• Shumilin A.A. Aerospace Systems of the United States. History, modernity, prospects. - M .: Veche, 2005 .-- 528 p. - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 5-9533-0820-5 .
• Gregory J. Kehrl. Athena Mission Planner's Guide (MPG) // Lockheed Martin . - 2012.
• Gregory J. Kehrl. Modernized Athena Ic & IIc Space Launch Vehicles // Lockheed Martin . - 2012.

• Carriers of a light class of the USA (Russian) . The science. Equipment. Inventions Archived on September 5, 2013.
• Krebs, Gunter. Athena-1 (LLV-1 / LMLV-1) Gunter's space page.
• Athena Lockheed Martin. Archived on September 5, 2013.
• Wade, Mark. Athena Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived on September 5, 2013.
• Wade, Mark. OAM (English) . Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived on September 5, 2013.
• McDowell, Jonathan. Launch Log Jonathan's Space Page. Archived on April 21, 2012.
• Kodiak Star - Kodiak Island Video Feeds . NASA Archived on September 5, 2013.