Athena (spacecraft)
Athena was a proposed space mission that would have performed a single flyby of asteroid 2 Pallas, the third largest asteroid in the Solar System.
| Mission type | Asteroid flyby |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA |
| Mission duration | 2 years (planned) |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Launch mass | ≈ 182 kg (401 lb) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | 2022 (proposed) |
| Flyby of 2 Pallas | |
If Athena had been funded, it was planned to share the launch vehicle with the Psyche and Janus spacecraft and fly its own trajectory for a Mars gravity assist to slingshot into the asteroid belt. It would have taken about two years to reach Pallas. The mission's principal investigator was Joseph O'Rourke, at Arizona State University.
The Athena spacecraft was examined in Category 1 of the 2018 NASA SIMPLEx competition and was eliminated before reaching Category 2; it will possibly be proposed at a later unknown time. The Athena mission was beaten by other mission concepts such as the TransOrbital TrailBlazer lunar orbiter.