File:KSC-05-S-00070 (ksc 031605 centaur).webm

English: NASA celebrates the Centaur booster's four decades of success. For more than 40 years, NASA's Centaur upper stage has provided the final boost for many of NASA's most exciting missions. During its storied history, the Centaur stage has helped launch 128 NASA missions. NASA recently commemorated the booster's success with a ceremony entitled 'Celebrating Centaur: Then and Now.' Held at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the event spotlighted the famous booster and reunited more than 180 past and present Centaur personnel. Kennedy Space Center Director Jim Kennedy kicked off the event with comments on the Centaur's previous and future contributions to space exploration. 'We are here today to pause to celebrate the accomplishments of hundreds of men and women who for more than 41 years now have seen to it that our country has the ability to explore the universe.' Later, NASA Launch Services Program Director Steve Francois recalled his first days in the Centaur's control room. The program concluded with remarks by Dr. Virginia Dawson, co-author of a new book on the history of the Centaur program. Attendees then toured the Centaur's original home, Launch Complex 36, and its current residence at Complex 41. More than 40 years in the making, the Centaur celebration connected the past with the present and enthusiastically pointed the way to the flights of tomorrow. 'Over the next several years we've got two exciting missions on Centaur. This summer in August we've got the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that we're gonna fly, which is our next trip to Mars after the Rovers. And then we follow that within about six months with the first real mission to go out and study Pluto. We've flown by it, but this is a mission dedicated to fly Pluto. And so I'd like to think that's just the beginning.'