The Athena family of launch vehicles is an initiative by Lockheed Martin to offer an all-solid fuel rocket capable of lifting modest payloads to low-Earth orbit. This is a model of the first one in the series, Athena I. There were four launches, beginning in 1995, and three of them were successful.

This is one of the simplest models offered on Erik te Groen's website, and it goes together pretty quickly. Still, I couldn't resist the temptation to add some detail; for example, to replicate the gold and silver bands on the rocket, I used either silver paper or thin strips of gold foil cut from a candy-bar wrapper. Even so, the model only took a night to build.

Image: Midship detail

Image: Lower detail