Hydrogen-fuelled space vehicleIn 1963, the first flight of a space vehicle powered by a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel combination was made by a Centaur II. It was one of a family of liquid fuelled upper stage vehicles designed to deliver a satellite to its operational orbit. The Centaur was originally designed to provide payload capacity for high altitude satellites, and lunar and planetary space probes. This Centaur was the upper stage on an Atlas rocket, AC-2, launched from the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Centaur's payload was a satellite, which it successfully put into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. (An earlier Centaur was on a failed suborbital launch attempt in mid-1962; the Atlas vehicle exploded due to insulation problems.)[Image: Centaur rocket in an artist's visualization]by Virginia P Dawson. |
