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 | Isar Aerospace | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | RKTs Progress |
| Country | 🇩🇪 Germany | 🇨🇳 China | 🇷🇺 Russia |
| Status | In Development | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| First flight | 2025 | 2020 | 2026 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,000 kgas of [1] | 1,500 kgas of [1] | 18,000 kgas of [1]Uncrewed configuration. ↑ Best |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | — | — | 61.9 m (uncrewed) / 65.9 m (crewed variant)as of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | 530 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 | — |
| Total flights | 1as of [1] | 5as of [1] ↑ Best | 1 (suborbital test)as of [1]First flight 2026-04-30 was a suborbital test, not yet a full orbital mission per this source. |
| 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 replacement for the Ukrainian-built Zenit, restoring medium-lift capability lost after 2014. Uses the RD-171MV — described as the most powerful liquid-fuel rocket engine in the world — on its first stage, launching from Baikonur. |
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.