Pick up to 4 launch vehicles to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | Isar Aerospace | Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) / CASC |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇩🇪 Germany | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | In Development | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2020 | 2025 | 2024 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,500 kgas of [1] | 1,000 kgas of [1] | 12,000 kgas of [1]At 200 km altitude; 10,000 kg at 300 km. ↑ Best |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | — | — | 62 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | — | 433 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Success rate | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. | 0/1 (first flight failed)as of [1]First flight from Andøya Spaceport (2025-03-30): liftoff succeeded but the rocket was terminated ~30 seconds in after a vent valve opened unexpectedly, causing loss of attitude control. Second flight ('Onward and Upward') repeatedly delayed through 2026 (weather, a safety-zone fishing vessel, a composite pressure vessel leak, then off-nominal fluid-system behavior as of 2026-06-15) — not yet flown as of this research. | 100% (6/6)as of [1] ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 5as of [1] | 1as of [1] | 6as of [1]All six flights deployed Guowang (China SatNet) internet-constellation satellites, exclusively from Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site. ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | 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. | Germany's first orbital-class launcher attempt; its first flight in March 2025 was Western Europe's first orbital launch attempt from the European mainland. A qualification second flight carrying CubeSats and ESA experiments has slipped repeatedly through 2026. | A medium-lift, kerosene/LOX launcher built specifically to deploy China's Guowang mega-constellation at high cadence from Wenchang's new commercial pads. |
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.