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 | ISRO | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇮🇳 India | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Status | Active | Active | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Small | Medium | Medium |
| Propellant | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | Solid (PS1/PS3) + UDMH/N₂O₄ (PS2/PS4) — 4 alternating stages | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | Yes |
| Stages | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2020 | 1993 | 2027 |
| Payload to LEO | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 3,800 kgas of [1]PSLV-XL with 6 extended solid strap-ons. Standard PSLV-G: 3,250 kg LEO. SSO: ~1,750 kg | 16,000+ kgas of [1]5 m fairing. Renamed from 'Medium Launch Vehicle' (MLV) to 'Eclipse' in May 2025 alongside the Northrop Grumman partnership. First stage (7 Miranda engines) designed for reuse from roughly the 6th flight onward; second stage uses one Vira engine. First flight targeted 2027 — stated plan, not yet flown. ↑ Best |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 20 mas of [1] | 44 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | 33 tas of [1] | 320 tas of [1]PSLV-XL configuration ↑ Best | — |
| Success rate | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | 93.7%as of [2]60/64 mission successes. Two consecutive recent failures: C61 (2024) and C62 (Jan 12, 2026, stage-3 anomaly, 16 satellites lost). ↑ Best | — |
| Total flights | 23as of [1] | 64as of [2] ↑ Best | — |
| Cost / kg LEO | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | ~$4,000/kgas of [1]Estimated from commercial launch contracts | — |
| 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. | India's most reliable and frequently flown launch vehicle, operational since 1994. Set a world record in Feb 2017 by deploying 104 satellites in a single flight (Cartosat-2D + 103 microsats). Launched Chandrayaan-1 (2008), Mars Orbiter Mission (2013), and Aditya-L1 (2023). The dual C61/C62 failure streak raised concerns about aging solid motor design. The vehicle is on a return-to-flight campaign (not retired): PSLV-C63 (TDS-01 technology demonstrator), with strengthened third-stage/PS3 checks following the expert-committee (FAC) review, is targeted for late June / early July 2026. | A medium-lift successor to Firefly's Alpha, co-developed with Northrop Grumman, aimed at the national-security and commercial medium-lift gap between small launchers and heavy-lift vehicles. |
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.