Centaure is the designation of a two-stage French sounding rocket

Sounding rocket

A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The origin of the term comes from nautical vocabulary, where to sound is to throw a weighted line from a ship into...

 consisting of a Belier

Belier

Belier is the designation of a single-step French elevator research rocket, which in three versions between 1961 and 1970 by Hammaguir, Salto di Quirra, Ile you Levant and Kourou was started...

 starting stage and a Venus upper stage. The Centaure has been built in a number of 230 and has been launched from Hammaguir

Hammaguir

Hammaguir is a town in Algeria, south-west of Béchar. Between 1947 and 1967 there was a rocket launch site near Hammaguir, used by France for launching sounding rockets and the satellite carrier "Diamant" between 1965 and 1967....

, Reggane

Reggane

Reggane from berber argan is a town in the Adrar Province of central Algeria, in the Sahara Desert. It is the southernmost town of the Tuat....

, CELPA

CELPA

CELPA was a rocket launch site in Argentina, near El Chamical, in the La Rioja Province. The launch site was in service between 1963 and 1973 and was mainly used for launching rockets of the types Centaure, Judi Dart, Orion, Rigel and Boosted Dart...

, Salto di Quirra

Salto di Quirra

Salto di Quirra is a rocket launching site near Perdasdefogu on Sardinia ....

, Esrange

Esrange

Esrange Space Center is a rocket range and research centre located outside the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high altitude balloons, investigation of the aurora borealis, sounding rocket launches, and satellite tracking, among other things...

, Thumba

Thumba

Thumba is a suburb of Thiruvananthapuram city, capital of Kerala, India.Thumba became well-known to the out-siders after the establishment of Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station , which was the first of that kind in India...

, Sonmiani

Sonmiani

Sonmiani 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 town also serves as a Union Council of Hub Tehsil. Sonmiani is noted for its space research...

 and Andøya

Andøya

Andøya is the northernmost island in the archipelago of Vesterålen. Andøya is located in the Andøy municipality in Nordland county, Norway.The island has an area of 489 km², making it the tenth largest island in Norway. The island is connected to the neighboring island of Hinnøya using the...

. It has 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 Belier, Centaure, Dragon

Dragon (rocket)

The Dragon is a two-stage French solid propellant sounding rocket used for high altitude research. Its first stage was a Stromboli engine which burned 675 kg of fuel in 16 s and so produced a maximum thrust of 88 kN. A Belier engine was used as the upper stage...

, Dauphin

Dauphin (rocket)

The Dauphin is a French sounding rocket, of which six versions were constructed between 1967 and 1978. It represents a modification of the starting stage of the Dragon with a larger payload nosecone....

 and Eridan

Eridan

The Eridan is a two-stage French sounding rocket, which resulted from the use of the Stromboli engine of the Dragon and/or Dauphin as first and second stage. It belonged thereby to a family of solid-propellant rockets from the Belier, the Centaure, to the Dragon, which existed Dauphin and the Eridan...

rockets.