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| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Gilmour Space Technologies | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | JAXA / IHI Aerospace |
| Country | 🇦🇺 Australia | 🇨🇳 China | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Status | In Development | Active | Retired |
| Vehicle class | Small | Small | Small |
| Propellant | Hybrid (Sirius motors, stages 1–2) / liquid (Phoenix engine, stage 3) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | Solid (HTPB — all stages) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| First flight | 2025 | 2020 | 2013 – 2022 |
| Payload to LEO | 300 kgas of [1] | 1,500 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 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 | 25 mas of [1] | — | 26 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | 96 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Success rate | 0/1as of [1]Maiden flight 2025-07-30 crashed 14 seconds after launch (insufficient thrust), from Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Queensland — Australia's first domestic orbital launch attempt. Preceded by two scrubs (2025-05-15 electrical issue, 2025-05-16 fairing anomaly). A second test flight was slated for early 2026. Block 2 (1,000 kg payload) and Eris Heavy (4,000 kg payload) variants are planned. | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. ↑ Best | 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 | 1as of [1] | 5as of [1] | 6as of [2] ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | Australia's first domestically developed orbital launch vehicle attempt, using a hybrid-propellant first and second stage; the maiden flight failed 14 seconds after liftoff in July 2025. | The larger sibling of Kuaizhou-1A, roughly 3.75x the payload class, road-mobile and solid-fueled, recovering commercial cadence after a 2020 debut failure. | 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.