No I am not talking about mythical creatures who were half man and half horse: I am talking about a rocket, a great rocket.
Centaur was conceived in the late 50’s when the Americans were awoken by the Soviet success in putting satellites into space and they also realised that something was needed to put heavy satellites into space. Centaur is not a booster which is to say that it is not the rocket that gets things off the ground: Centaur is a second or third stage rocket which is the gizmo that thumps its payload into space – and it has done that bloody well.
Centaur was the first proper rocket to use liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen as a fuel and that brought its own unique problems which were overcome.
Atop boosters like Atlas and Titan, Centaur has sent exploring probes all over the solar system. Surveyor to the Moon, Mariner, Pioneer, Viking and Voyager to all the planets out to Neptune and finally Pluto New Horizons, which still has 2374 days, 16 hours and 2 minutes to its closest encounter.
It launched so many other satellites including Cassini which to this day still orbits Saturn.
Centaur is coming on 50 years old and remains a towering engineering achievement.
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