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The Atlas-Centaur was a United States expendable launch vehicle derived from the SM-65 Atlas D missile. The vehicle featured a Centaur upper stage, the first such stage to use high-performance liquid hydrogen as fuel.
Dec 12, 2012 · Centaur continues to support scientific missions such as SOHO, which launched on Atlas/Centaur-121 on December 2, 1995. This was NASA’s first use of this commercial version of the Atlas IIAS rocket. Centaur flew again on top of a Titan booster in October 1997 to launch Cassini on its way to Saturn. Into the Future
The first attempt to launch an Atlas/Centaur from the Atlantic Missile Range was unsuccessful when the Centaur stage blew up at T+55 seconds due to a second stage structural failure. Despite this failure, the launch marked the first U.S. use of a space vehicle fueled by a liquid hydrogen engine. First Centaur flight (unsuccessful).
Nov 13, 2023 · An Atlas-Centaur rocket is at Cape Kennedy’s Pad 36A for a tanking test in preparation for the June 1964 AC-3 launch. Centaur was a 15000-pound thrust second-stage rocket designed for the military in 1957 and 1958 by General Dynamics. It was the first major rocket to use the liquid hydrogen technology developed by Lewis in the 1950s.
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The name Atlas-Centaur has come to be applied as a generic name for a variety of Atlas-based first and upper stage combinations which evolved from the Atlas D and remained in use for many years. The first Atlas-Centaur, introduced in 1962, employed the Atlas D missile as first stage and the Convair-developed Centaur as second stage.
Mar 1, 2013 · General Dynamics designed Centaur to be used with an Atlas booster to send the Surveyor spacecraft to the Moon in the mid-1960s to examine sites for the Apollo landings. Centaur was the first space vehicle to use liquid hydrogen, and Lewis research in the 1950s had demonstrated liquid hydrogen’s applicability to rockets.
