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 | SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) 🇮🇳 India Trust: Operator-primaryⓘ Last verified Active · Last updated 2026-07-26Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | ISRO / Hindustan Aeronautics Limited | Khrunichev / Roscosmos | LandSpace |
| Country | 🇮🇳 India | 🇷🇺 Russia | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | Retired | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Heavy | Medium |
| Propellant | Solid (HTPB, stages 1–3) / MMH-MON3 liquid (velocity trimming module) | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic — all stages) | Methalox (LOX / liquid methane) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| First flight | 2022 | 2001 – 2023 | 2024 |
| Payload to LEO | 500 kgas of [1]500 km altitude, 35–55° inclination. 300 kg to 500 km SSO. | 22,400 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 6,000 kgas of [1]4,000 kg to 500 km SSO. Enhanced variant of the base Zhuque-2 with a common-bulkhead tank, TQ-15 thrust-vectoring engine on stage 2, and a niobium-alloy nozzle extension. A further-improved Block 2 first flew 2026-05-14 with subcooled propellant loading and a 3-ignition second stage. |
| Payload to GTO | — | 6,290 kgas of [1]With Briz-M upper stage ↑ Best | — |
| Height | 34 mas of [1] | 58.2 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | 120 tas of [1] | 712 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Success rate | 2/3 (67%)as of [1]First flight (Aug 2022) partial failure — satellites reached a lower-than-planned orbit. Second and third flights successful. | ~91%as of [2]~13 mission failures out of ~115 flights in Proton-M variant; highly toxic propellant complicated recovery operations | 100% since 2024-11-27 debutas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 3as of [1] | ~115as of [2]Effectively retired ~2023 with Russian government replacing it with Angara A5 ↑ Best | 2+ (2E variant)as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | ₹30–35 crore per launch (~$3.1M–$3.6M)as of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — | — |
| Summary | ISRO's small-satellite launcher, designed for quick-turnaround dedicated smallsat missions. Full manufacturing, marketing and launch rights were transferred to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in June 2025 under a technology-transfer agreement. | 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. | LandSpace's enhanced methalox launcher, the higher-performance successor to the original Zhuque-2 (the first methalox rocket ever to reach orbit, in 2023) — see slug 'zhuque-2' for the original vehicle already in our database. |
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.