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Intro music.

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NASA celebrates the Centaur booster's four decades of success.

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For more than 40 years, NASA's Centaur upper stage has provided the final boost for many of NASA's most exciting missions.

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During its storied history, the Centaur stage has helped launch 128 NASA missions.

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NASA recently commemorated the booster's success with a ceremony entitled "Celebrating Centaur: Then and Now."

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Held at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the event spotlighted the famous

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booster and reunited more than 180 past and present Centaur personnel.

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Kennedy Space Center Director Jim Kennedy kicked off the event with comments on the

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Centaur's previous and future contributions to space exploration.

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"We are here today to pause to celebrate the accomplishments of hundreds of men and

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women who for more than 41 years now have seen to it that our country has the ability to explore the universe."

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Later, NASA Launch Services Program Director Steve Francois recalled his first days in the Centaur's control room.

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The program concluded with remarks by Dr. Virginia Dawson, co-author of a new book on the history of the Centaur program.

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Attendees then toured the Centaur's original home, Launch Complex 36, and its current residence at Complex 41.

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More than 40 years in the making, the Centaur celebration connected the past with the

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present and enthusiastically pointed the way to the flights of tomorrow.

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"Over the next several years we've got two exciting missions on Centaur. This summer

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in August we've got the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that we're gonna fly, which is

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our next trip to Mars after the Rovers. And then we follow that within about six

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months with the first real mission to go out and study Pluto. We've flown by it, but

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this is a mission dedicated to fly Pluto. And so I'd like to think that's just the beginning."

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