Pick up to 4 launch vehicles to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Arianespace / ArianeGroup | Gilmour Space Technologies | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) |
| Country | 🇪🇺 Europe | 🇦🇺 Australia | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Retired | In Development | Active |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Small | Small |
| Propellant | LH₂ / LOX (Vulcain 2) + solid HTPB boosters | Hybrid (Sirius motors, stages 1–2) / liquid (Phoenix engine, stage 3) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| First flight | 1996 – 2023 | 2025 | 2020 |
| Payload to LEO | 21,000 kgas of [1]Ariane 5 ECA configuration ↑ Best | 300 kgas of [1] | 1,500 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | 10,865 kgas of [1]ECA configuration. Ariane 5 ES (ATV) variant: 21,000 kg LEO ↑ Best | — | — |
| Height | 54 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 25 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 777 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. |
| Success rate | 97.5%as of [2]113/117 successes. Failures: V501 (Jun 1996, first flight), V63 (Dec 2002, off-course but payload recovered). 2 partial successes. | 0/1as of [1]Maiden flight 2025-07-30 crashed 14 seconds after launch (insufficient thrust), from Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Queensland — Australia's first domestic orbital launch attempt. Preceded by two scrubs (2025-05-15 electrical issue, 2025-05-16 fairing anomaly). A second test flight was slated for early 2026. Block 2 (1,000 kg payload) and Eris Heavy (4,000 kg payload) variants are planned. | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 117as of [2]VA261 (Jul 5, 2023) was the final Ariane 5 flight. Launched the James Webb Space Telescope (Dec 2021). ↑ Best | 1as of [1] | 5as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | Europe's dominant heavy-lift rocket for 27 years. Its most famous payload: the James Webb Space Telescope (Dec 25, 2021). Retired Jul 5, 2023 to make way for Ariane 6. Responsible for launching over 250 commercial and scientific payloads including XMM-Newton, Rosetta, and BepiColombo. | Australia's first domestically developed orbital launch vehicle attempt, using a hybrid-propellant first and second stage; the maiden flight failed 14 seconds after liftoff in July 2025. | The larger sibling of Kuaizhou-1A, roughly 3.75x the payload class, road-mobile and solid-fueled, recovering commercial cadence after a 2020 debut failure. |
48 launch vehicles across 10 countries — active, retired, and in development — with primary-source citations from manufacturer user guides and agency press kits. Pure URL state: bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.