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 | Galactic Energy | CASC / CALT | CASC / SAST |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Heavy | Medium |
| Propellant | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | UDMH/N₂O₄ (stages 1–2) + LH₂/LOX (stage 3 YF-75) | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| First flight | 2020 | 1996 | 1992 |
| Payload to LEO | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 11,200 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 3,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~1,300 kg; standard LEO 3,500 kg |
| Payload to GTO | — | 5,500 kgas of [1]With 4 strap-on liquid boosters (CZ-3B/E enhanced variant) ↑ Best | — |
| Height | 20 mas of [1] | 54.84 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 41.06 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 33 tas of [1] | 426 tas of [1]Enhanced variant with 4 liquid strap-on boosters ↑ Best | 232 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | ~95%as of [2]~6 failures/partial failures out of ~105+ flights; gradually being superseded by Long March 5 for GTO | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 23as of [1] | ~105as of [2] ↑ Best | ~78as of [2] |
| Cost / kg LEO | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — | — |
| Summary | Galactic Energy's workhorse small-lift solid rocket — one of the most-flown Chinese commercial launchers — with a sea-launch variant (Ceres-1S, debuted Sep 2023) and a larger Ceres-2 in development. | China's primary geostationary transfer vehicle for over 25 years. Launched communications, meteorology, and navigation satellites including Beidou-3 (GEO/IGSO nodes). Being phased out in favour of Long March 5 for heavier GTO payloads as newer domestic communications satellites grow in mass. | China's most-used sun-synchronous and polar orbit workhorse for small-to-medium military and commercial Earth observation satellites. Launched from Jiuquan and Taiyuan. Uses storable hypergolic propellants for high launch-readiness but produces toxic exhaust. |
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.