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On June 18, 2009, the 187th Centaur took what NASA called “A First Step in the Return to the Moon.” It would star in LCROSS, the NASA-Ames-Northrup Grumman experiment to detect lunar water. LCROSS stands for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. As David DeFelice of NASA’s Glenn Research Center put it, Centaur is “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” because it must quietly retire in Earth orbit after kicking its amazing payloads off on their headline-making missions. But this time, “Centaur will be the center of attention for a few glorious minutes in October,” wrote DeFelice in NASA’s mission pages. |