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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | United Launch Alliance | Galactic Energy | JAXA / IHI Aerospace |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Status | Retired | Active | Retired |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Small | Small |
| Propellant | LH2 / LOX | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | Solid (HTPB — all stages) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| First flight | 2004 – 2024 | 2020 | 2013 – 2022 |
| Payload to LEO | 28,370 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 590 kgas of [1]500 kg to SSO. Enhanced Epsilon (from E-4) added 700 kg LEO via PBS liquid kick stage. |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 70.7 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 20 mas of [1] | 26 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 733 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 33 tas of [1] | 96 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 93.75% (15/16 full success, 1 partial failure)as of [1] ↑ Best | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | 83.3%as of [2]5/6 successes. E-6 (Oct 12, 2022) PBS upper stage failed to ignite, eight satellites lost. Epsilon S (next-generation) ground test anomaly Jan 2023 effectively ended the programme. |
| Total flights | 16as of [1] | 23as of [1] ↑ Best | 6as of [2] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | ULA's triple-common-booster-core heavy-lift launcher, retired 2024-04-09 after its final flight; superseded by Vulcan Centaur, which ULA states offers similar heavy-lift capability at lower cost. | 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. | JAXA's small solid-fuel rocket derived from the M-V rocket heritage. Designed for highly autonomous operations — launch preparations could be managed by just 8 people. The sixth and final E-6 mission (Oct 2022) failed when the PBS kick stage didn't ignite; a ground explosion during Epsilon S testing (Jan 2023) ended the programme. |
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.