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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | CASC / CALT | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Status | Active | Active | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | RP-1 / LOX (YF-100 + YF-115) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid-fueled 4th stage | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | Yes |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2016 | 2017 | 2027 |
| Payload to LEO | 13,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~5,500 kg | 400 kgas of [1] | 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 | — | — | — |
| Height | 53.1 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 19.4 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 597 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 30 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable — road-mobile solid launcher. | — |
| Success rate | 100%as of [2]12/12 missions, all Tianzhou ISS resupply or CZ-7 tech demo flights | ~85% (23 successes, 3 failures, 1 partial failure of 27)as of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Total flights | 12as of [2]Most recently Tianzhou-10 cargo to Tiangong (May 11, 2026) | 27as of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | China's workhorse medium-lift rocket, used exclusively for Tianzhou automated cargo missions to the Tiangong space station. Designed to replace the Long March 2F for high-cadence LEO/cargo missions. Uses the same YF-100 engines as Long March 5's boosters. | CASIC's road-mobile, quick-response small solid launcher, operated commercially by ExPace since 2017 — one of the higher-cadence Chinese small-lift vehicles. | 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.