Shuttle Centaur Spaceplane

Last crawled date: 10 months, 2 weeks ago

With the introduction of the Space Shuttle, NASA and the Air Force needed an upper stage to boost payloads out of low Earth orbit. A new version of Centaur, the Centaur-G, a space-tug type of spacecraft used to transfer spaceborne cargo from one orbit to another orbit with different energy characteristics was developed, with both Challenger and Discovery modified to carry the stage. Centaur-G was optimized for installation in the Orbiter payload bay by increasing the hydrogen tank diameter to 14 feet while retaining the 10-foot-diameter (3.0 m) oxygen tank. Its initial mission, scheduled for May 16, 1986, was to boost the Galileo probe to Jupiter, then, just six days later, the Ulysses probe. Ulysses would also be boosted to Jupiter in order to use the planet's gravity to reach a highly inclined solar orbit to allow observation of the Sun's polar regions. During the developmental phase of the Shuttle in the 1970s, NASA debated the use of the solid-fueled IUS (Inertial Upper Stage) or the Centaur. In the end, NASA approved Shuttle-Centaur. The Air Force had plans for classified military Shuttle missions launching satellites that would need Centaur's extra power. The Centaur, as carried in the Shuttle payload bay, required a complex airborne support system, the Centaur Integrated Support System (CISS). A shortened version of the Centaur-G was also planned for use on shuttle missions involving Department of Defense payloads and was to be used for launching the Magellan probe to Venus. Further reading: Long-forgotten Shuttle/Centaur boosted Cleveland's NASA center into manned space program and controversy