At Cape Canaveral's Pad 46, a LMLV-2 booster is set to lift NASA's Lunar Prospector satellite to the Moon this fall, another in the space agency's series of "smaller, faster, cheaper" satellite missions following in the footsteps of the Mars Pathfinder. A failure to loft Lewis might have grounded the lunar mission, set to search for water ice at the Moon's poles, for several months. Friday's success may clear the way for that endangered robotic flight.

Lockheed offers three versions of the basic LMLV space vehicle to customers. The smallest in the rocket family, the LMLV-1 stands 65 feet tall and is built atop a Thiokol Castor 120 solid fueled rocket motor. It can orbit one ton of payload into a 100 mile high low orbit. The larger LMLV-2 and 3 can lift 4,390 and more than 6,000 pounds of payload, respectively. Launch control is conducted via a small van near the rocket's pad. The Friday night blast-off was also the first successful space mission launched from what was once called "Slick 6", or U.S. Space launch Complex 6 at the military spaceport on the southern California coast. Originally built for use in the 1960's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was cancelled, the pad was redesigned for the space shuttle, providing a second launching base for the winged vehicles. But following the 1986 Challenger disaster, west coast launches of the shuttles by the U.S. Air Force were cancelled as well. In 1994, the Air Force joined with the California Spaceport Authority in releasing SLC-6 for commercial use. The 1995 LMLV-1 launch failure was the first time a rocket actually was fired from the pad.

The NASA Lewis satellite carries hyperspectral imager and a series of sensors to study ultraviolet radiation in deep space. A sister craft, dubbed "Clark" is also planned for launch, but delays with the spacecraft and its payloads have caused cost overruns which may result in cancellation of the flight.