The Athena 2 rocket sits on the pad at Cape Canaveral prior to launching the Lunar Prospector spacecraft to the moon in 1998. Photo: NASA

Lockheed Martin's Athena rocket, facing a very uncertain future after being left out of a NASA launch services contract two years ago, received favorable news from the space agency Monday.

The government has decided to add the Athena 2 rocket to the NASA Launch Services (NLS) contract using the contract's "on-ramp" provision. The vehicle will join Boeing's Delta and Lockheed Martin's Atlas rockets as part of NLS contract originally awarded in June 2000.

The NASA Launch Services contract call for launching payloads that weigh 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms) or heavier to a 125-mile-high (200-kilometer) circular orbit.

The Athena family includes the three-stage Athena 1 and four-stage Athena 2 capable of launching up to 1,750 and 4,350 pounds, respectively. NASA selected the more powerful Athena 2 to carry out future missions.

Although neither a specific payload nor mission have been assigned to the Athena 2 under the contract, NASA's decision keeps the small satellite launcher alive.

Lockheed Martin was dealt a blow in October 1998 when NASA passed up Athena in selecting rockets to launch the agency's small scientific spacecraft as part of the Small Expendable Launch Vehicle Services contract. Company officials said they made mistakes in bidding for the contract, costing Athena the chance for winning the contract. NASA picked Coleman Research Corp.'s LK-0 rocket and Orbital Sciences' Taurus and Pegasus vehicles.

The lack of NASA missions, coupled with the high competition in a smaller-than-once-envisioned small satellite launch market hit the Athena program hard.

Illustration of the four-stage Athena 2 rocket. Photo: Lockheed Martin

Only one more Athena launch is officially on the books at present, a thrown-together flight for NASA and the Air Force carrying several small experimental satellites. The rocket was slated to launch the Vegetation Canopy Lidar satellite, but the spacecraft is behind schedule and has grown too large for the Athena to lift.

The upcoming launch is planned for August 31 from Kodiak Island in Alaska, the new West Coast home for Athena. Previous launches into polar orbits were conducted from the mothballed space shuttle pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but Boeing now leases that site for its next generation Delta 4 rockets. As a result, Lockheed Martin moved Athena to the new commercial site at Kodiak.

Athena is also flown from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Besides working to win more NASA launches, Lockheed Martin says it is still seeking additional commercial flights for Athena, the lightweight rocket in the company's stable that also includes Atlas and Titan space boosters.

Athena has flown six times with two failures -- the inaugural test flight in 1995 and a mishap in the spring of 1999 when the rocket's nose cone didn't separate, which resulted in the loss of the Ikonos 1 commercial Earth imaging spacecraft.

The successful launches included two NASA missions -- the Lewis remote sensing satellite in 1997 and the mission that sent Lunar Prospector to the moon in 1998. The other successful launches were commercial -- the 1999 flight that lofted the first Taiwanese satellite and deployment of the second Ikonos satellite later that same year.