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 | CASC / SAST | Space One | Galactic Energy |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇯🇵 Japan | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | In Development | Active |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Small | Small |
| Propellant | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) | Solid | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| First flight | 1992 | 2024 | 2020 |
| Payload to LEO | 3,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~1,300 kg; standard LEO 3,500 kg ↑ Best | — | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 41.06 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 20 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 232 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 33 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) ↑ Best | 0/3 — three consecutive failuresas of [1]2024-03-13: disintegrated shortly after liftoff. 2024-12-18: began tumbling during 1st-stage burn, flight terminated. 2026-03-04: flight termination activated ~70 seconds after liftoff. All three launches flew from Spaceport Kii, Wakayama — Japan's first private-sector spaceport. Program grounded as of this research; precise payload/height/mass specs not confirmed from a primary source. | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] |
| Total flights | ~78as of [2] ↑ Best | 3as of [1] | 23as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest |
| Summary | 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. | A Japanese commercial solid-fuel small launcher that has failed on all three flight attempts through March 2026, putting its commercial viability in serious question. | 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. |
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.