Centaure was a two-stage French sounding rocket consisting of a Belier (rocket) starting stage and a

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

upper stage. It was operated by

CNES The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...

between 1961 and 1986. The Centaure has been built in a number of 230 and has been launched from the CIEES/

Hammaguir Hammaguir (also written Hamaguir and Hammaguira) ( ar, حماقير) is a village in Abadla District, Béchar Province, Algeria, south-west of Béchar. It lies on the N50 national highway between Béchar and Tindouf. The location is notable fo ...

missile range,

Reggane Reggane (from Berber "Argan"; ar, رقان) is a town and commune, and the capital of Reggane District, in Adrar Province, central Algeria. Reggane lies in the Sahara Desert near an oasis. According to the 2008 census it has a population of 20,4 ...

, CELPA,

Salto di Quirra Salto di Quirra is a restricted weapons testing range and rocket launching site near Perdasdefogu on Sardinia. It is the largest military range in Italy, composed of 12000 hectares of land owned by the Italian Ministry of Defence and one of the ...

Esrange Esrange Space Center (short form Esrange) is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the au ...

Thumba Thumba is a coastal area of Thiruvananthapuram city, the capital of Kerala, India. Location and geography Thumba is a vast village bordering Menamkulam in the east, St. Dominic's Vettucaud in the north, and Kochuthura in the south; towards its ...

Sonmiani Somiani ( ur, ) is a coastal town in the southeast of Balochistan province in Pakistan, approximately 145 kilometres northwest of Karachi. The coast of Sonmiani is the northernmost point of the Arabian Sea. The Sonmiani Beach is one of the most po ...

, and

Andøya Andøya is the northernmost island in the Vesterålen archipelago, situated about inside the Arctic circle. Andøya is located in Andøy Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The main population centres on the island include the villages of ...

. It had a maximum payload of 60 kg, a maximum height of 140 km, a launch thrust of 44 kN, a launch weight of 457 kg, a diameter of 0.28 m and a length of 6.02 m. It belongs to a family of solid-propellant rockets consisting of the Belier, Centaure, Dragon, Dauphin, and Eridan rockets.

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20131019123755/http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/centaure.htm Sounding rockets of France {{rocket-stub