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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | United Launch Alliance | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman | Khrunichev / Roscosmos |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇷🇺 Russia |
| Status | Retired | In Development | Retired |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Medium | Heavy |
| Propellant | LH2 / LOX | RP-1 / LOX | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic — all stages) |
| Reusable | No | Yes | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| First flight | 2004 – 2024 | 2027 | 2001 – 2023 |
| Payload to LEO | 28,370 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 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. | 22,400 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | 6,290 kgas of [1]With Briz-M upper stage ↑ Best |
| Height | 70.7 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 58.2 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 733 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 712 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 93.75% (15/16 full success, 1 partial failure)as of [1] ↑ Best | — | ~91%as of [2]~13 mission failures out of ~115 flights in Proton-M variant; highly toxic propellant complicated recovery operations |
| Total flights | 16as of [1] | — | ~115as of [2]Effectively retired ~2023 with Russian government replacing it with Angara A5 ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | ULA's triple-common-booster-core heavy-lift launcher, retired 2024-04-09 after its final flight; superseded by Vulcan Centaur, which ULA states offers similar heavy-lift capability at lower cost. | 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. | Russia's dominant heavy-lift rocket for GEO comsats and planetary missions from 1965 (Proton family) through 2023 (Proton-M). Notorious for its hypergolic propellant — a highly toxic UDMH/N₂O₄ combination that caused environmental concerns at Baikonur. Replaced by Angara A5. |
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.