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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | JAXA / Mitsubishi Heavy Industries | Galactic Energy | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman |
| Country | 🇯🇵 Japan | 🇨🇳 China | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Status | Retired | Active | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | LH₂ / LOX (LE-7A first stage + LE-5B second stage) | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | Yes |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2001 – 2025 | 2020 | 2027 |
| Payload to LEO | 10,000 kgas of [1]202 configuration (2 SRB-A3 solid strap-ons) | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 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 | 4,100 kgas of [1]202 configuration ↑ Best | — | — |
| Height | 53 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 20 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 285 tas of [1]202 configuration ↑ Best | 33 tas of [1] | — |
| Success rate | 98%as of [2]49/50 successes. Only failure: F6 (Nov 2003, MTSAT-1R lost due to SRB separation anomaly). Retired after Flight 50 (GOSAT-GW, Jun 28, 2025). ↑ Best | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | — |
| Total flights | 50as of [2]50 flights from 2001–2025. H3 replaces it from 2024 onward. ↑ Best | 23as of [1] | — |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | Japan's flagship medium-lift rocket for 24 years, retiring after an exceptional 49/50 mission success record. Launched the SELENE lunar orbiter (2007), Akatsuki Venus probe (2010), Hayabusa2 (2014), SLIM lunar lander (2023), and the ALOS series Earth observation satellites. | 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. | 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.