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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Isar Aerospace | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | Khrunichev / Roscosmos |
| Country | 🇩🇪 Germany | 🇨🇳 China | 🇷🇺 Russia |
| Status | In Development | Active | Retired |
| Vehicle class | Small | Small | Heavy |
| Propellant | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic — all stages) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| First flight | 2025 | 2020 | 2001 – 2023 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,000 kgas of [1] | 1,500 kgas of [1] | 22,400 kgas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | 6,290 kgas of [1]With Briz-M upper stage ↑ Best |
| Height | — | — | 58.2 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | 712 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| 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. | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. ↑ Best | ~91%as of [2]~13 mission failures out of ~115 flights in Proton-M variant; highly toxic propellant complicated recovery operations |
| Total flights | 1as of [1] | 5as of [1] | ~115as of [2]Effectively retired ~2023 with Russian government replacing it with Angara A5 ↑ Best |
| 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. | 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. | Russia's dominant heavy-lift rocket for GEO comsats and planetary missions from 1965 (Proton family) through 2023 (Proton-M). Notorious for its hypergolic propellant — a highly toxic UDMH/N₂O₄ combination that caused environmental concerns at Baikonur. Replaced by Angara A5. |
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.