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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman | Avio | CASC / SAST |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇪🇺 Europe | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | In Development | In Development | Active |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | RP-1 / LOX | Solid (P160C first stage) / LOX-methane (cryogenic upper stage) | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) |
| Reusable | Yes | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| First flight | 2027 | 2027 | 1992 |
| Payload to LEO | 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 | — | 3,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~1,300 kg; standard LEO 3,500 kg |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | — | — | 41.06 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | — | 232 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Success rate | — | — | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) ↑ Best |
| Total flights | — | — | ~78as of [2] ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | 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. | The next evolution of ESA's Vega line: replaces the Zefiro-9 and AVUM+ stages with a single cryogenic LOX/methane upper stage powered by the new M10 engine, adding multi-orbit deployment flexibility. First flight is a stated target (2027), not yet flown. | 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.