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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Isar Aerospace | JAXA / Mitsubishi Heavy Industries | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) |
| Country | 🇩🇪 Germany | 🇯🇵 Japan | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | In Development | Retired | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Medium | Small |
| Propellant | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) | LH₂ / LOX (LE-7A first stage + LE-5B second stage) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| First flight | 2025 | 2001 – 2025 | 2020 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,000 kgas of [1] | 10,000 kgas of [1]202 configuration (2 SRB-A3 solid strap-ons) ↑ Best | 1,500 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | 4,100 kgas of [1]202 configuration ↑ Best | — |
| Height | — | 53 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | — | 285 tas of [1]202 configuration ↑ Best | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. |
| Success rate | 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. | 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). | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 1as of [1] | 50as of [2]50 flights from 2001–2025. H3 replaces it from 2024 onward. ↑ Best | 5as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | 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. | 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. | 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. |
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.