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 | LandSpace | Khrunichev / Roscosmos | Interstellar Technologies |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇷🇺 Russia | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Status | Active | Retired | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Heavy | Small |
| Propellant | Methalox (LOX / liquid methane) | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic — all stages) | Liquid biomethane (LBM) / LOX |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| First flight | 2024 | 2001 – 2023 | 2027 |
| Payload to LEO | 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. | 22,400 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 250 kgas of [1]500 km SSO. No flight attempts as of this research — follows the company's successful suborbital MOMO sounding-rocket program. A larger orbital vehicle, DECA, was announced January 2023. |
| Payload to GTO | — | 6,290 kgas of [1]With Briz-M upper stage ↑ Best | — |
| Height | — | 58.2 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | — | 712 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Success rate | 100% since 2024-11-27 debutas of [1] ↑ Best | ~91%as of [2]~13 mission failures out of ~115 flights in Proton-M variant; highly toxic propellant complicated recovery operations | — |
| Total flights | 2+ (2E variant)as of [1] | ~115as of [2]Effectively retired ~2023 with Russian government replacing it with Angara A5 ↑ Best | — |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | 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. | 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. | A liquid-biomethane orbital smallsat launcher from Interstellar Technologies, Japan's most established private rocket startup by suborbital flight heritage, though not yet flown to orbit. |
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.