The Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile and the trunk from which an entire family of launch vehicles grew. A direct descendant of the German V-2, it first flew in 1953, and its surplus airframes opened the way for the…
The R-7 Semyorka was the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile and, only months after its first successful flight, the vehicle that placed Sputnik 1 in orbit. Its layout of a central core ringed by four jettisonable boosters…
The Atlas family is the lineage of American missiles and launch vehicles that begins with the SM-65 intercontinental ballistic missile and reaches, seven decades later, the Atlas V. It was born as a Cold War weapon, had a short military…
Juno I was the four-stage launch vehicle that placed the first American satellite, Explorer 1, in orbit in 1958. Derived from the Jupiter-C sounding rocket and therefore from the Redstone missile, it flew for barely nine months and in that…
The Titan II was the two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile that the Glenn L. Martin Company derived from the Titan I, and it carried the largest single warhead in the American arsenal. Later adapted as a space launch vehicle, it…
Proton, conceived as an oversized intercontinental missile that was never deployed as one, became the heavy workhorse of the Soviet and later Russian space programme. It flew the Venus and Mars probes, every Salyut station, almost all of…
The Saturn IB was the "uprated Saturn I" that NASA commissioned to test the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit before the Saturn V was ready. A two-stage vehicle with a spotless record, it carried the first Apollo crew, the three Skylab…
Soyuz is the expendable launcher with which the Soviet Union, from 1966 onward, brought order to the sprawling family of rockets derived from the R-7. The original 11A511 model founded a lineage that still sends Progress freighters to the…
The Saturn V was the three-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle NASA developed for the Apollo programme and the first to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. Thirteen vehicles flew between 1967 and 1973; nine sent twenty-four astronauts…
The N1 was the super-heavy rocket with which the Soviet Union intended to land cosmonauts on the Moon, its counterpart to the American Saturn V. All four launch attempts, between 1969 and 1972, failed, and the programme stayed secret until…
Energia was the super-heavy launcher the Soviet Union built in the 1980s as the backbone of the Buran programme, and the first of its class the country managed to fly to orbit. It launched only twice, in 1987 and 1988, before vanishing…
The Long March 2D (Chang Zheng 2D, CZ-2D or LM-2D) is a Chinese two-stage orbital carrier rocket used mainly to place satellites into low Earth and Sun-synchronous orbits. It is built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology…
The Pegasus XL is the stretched configuration of Pegasus, the air-launched small-lift vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation and later built and operated by Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman. It is not a separate rocket but a…
Ariane 5 was the European heavy-lift launcher that for almost three decades gave the European Space Agency its own access to geostationary orbit from French Guiana. After a catastrophic debut in 1996 it strung together 82 consecutive…
The Long March 4B, also known as Chang Zheng 4B, CZ-4B or LM-4B, is a Chinese expendable three-stage orbital launch vehicle built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. It belongs to the Long March family and is the basis from…
The Soyuz-2.1a is the baseline model of the Russian Soyuz-2 launcher family — that is, a specific configuration within that series rather than a standalone rocket. Soyuz-2 as a whole is a series of expendable medium-lift launch vehicles,…
"Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat-M" does not denote a stand-alone rocket but a specific stack: the baseline Soyuz-2.1a model of the Russian Soyuz-2 family, topped by the optional Fregat-M upper stage. Soyuz-2 is a series of expendable medium-lift launch…
The Atlas V 551 is the most powerful faired configuration of the Atlas V, not a separate rocket. Atlas V is an expendable launch system, the fifth major version of the Atlas family, developed by Lockheed Martin and operated since 2006 by…
The Long March 4C, also known as Chang Zheng 4C, CZ-4C and LM-4C, is a Chinese orbital launch vehicle built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. It flies from the Jiuquan, Taiyuan and Xichang launch centres and consists of…
Soyuz-2.1b is the higher-performance variant of the Russian Soyuz-2 family, and therefore not a separate rocket but a configuration: it shares with the baseline 2.1a its airframe, its four strap-on boosters, its core stage and all of its…
The Long March 3B/E, also known as the 3B/G2, is not a new launcher but the enhanced version of the Long March 3B, the heaviest variant of the Long March 3 family. The original 3B, introduced in 1996, is a three-stage rocket with four…
Minotaur IV, also known as Peacekeeper SLV and OSP-2 PK, is a US small-lift launch vehicle operated by Northrop Grumman that repurposes the motors of the retired LGM-118 Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile. It measures 23.88…
The Falcon 9 is the launcher that rewrote the rules of space access: a two-stage rocket whose first stage comes back, lands upright and flies again — something the industry considered economically impossible until SpaceX made it…
The Long March 2F/G is the upgraded configuration of the Long March 2F that China now uses for all of its crewed flights. The CZ-2F is a human-rated, two-stage, hypergolic-fuelled medium-lift launcher developed by CALT; it has launched the…
Angara-1.2 is a Russian two-stage small-lift launch vehicle built by Khrunichev and part of the Angara family. It is sized to place up to 3.5 t into low Earth orbit and up to 2.4 t into Sun-synchronous orbit, standing about 41.5 m tall…
The Long March 6 (Chang Zheng 6, abbreviated CZ 6 inside China and LM 6 for export) is a Chinese liquid-fuelled launch vehicle of the Long March family, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation together with the…
The Long March 7 (Chang Zheng 7 in pinyin, abbreviated CZ-7 inside China and LM-7 for export) is a Chinese liquid-fuelled medium-lift launch vehicle of the Long March family, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology…
The Long March 5 (Chang Zheng 5, CZ-5), nicknamed in China "Pang-Wu" (胖五, "Fat-Five"), is the heavy-lift launcher developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT). It is the most powerful Long March rocket ever built and…
Authors of the study:
Richard French, Christophe Mandy, Richard Hunter, Ehson Mosleh, Doug Sinclair, Peter Beck, Sara Seager, Janusz J. Petkowski, Christopher E. Carr, David H. Grinspoon, Darrel Baumgardner, and on behalf of the Rocket Lab Venus Team (CC BY), vía commons
Electron is a two-stage small orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider with roots in both New Zealand and the United States. It stands 18 m tall, measures 1.2 m in diameter and…
Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle designed, manufactured and operated by the American company SpaceX. Its architecture consists of a center core onto which two Falcon 9-derived boosters are attached, with…
The Long March 7A (CZ-7A or LM-7A) is not a stand-alone rocket but a specific configuration of the Long March 7 family, the medium-lift liquid-fuelled launcher developed by China's space industry and first flown on 25 June 2016. The…
Kuaizhou 11 (KZ-11) is the largest model in the Kuaizhou family, a Chinese series of "quick-reaction" orbital launch vehicles manufactured by ExPace, the commercial subsidiary of the state-owned CASIC. The name Kuaizhou means "speedy…
The Long March 8 (CZ-8) is an orbital launch vehicle developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) around a very specific design target: placing up to 5000 kg into a 700 km Sun-synchronous orbit. It is a two-stage,…
The Long March 6A (CZ-6A within China, LM 6A for export) is a Chinese medium-lift launch vehicle in the Long March family, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and built by the Shanghai Academy of…
Vega C, or "Vega Consolidation", is a European expendable medium-lift launch vehicle developed and produced by the Italian company Avio. It is an evolution of the original Vega launcher, designed to offer greater launch performance and…
Kinetica 1, known in Chinese as Lijian-1 (LJ-1, "Powerful Rocket-1"), is a small-lift orbital launch vehicle developed by CAS Space, a company linked to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It measures 29.7 m tall and 2.65 m in diameter and…
Jielong 3, marketed internationally as Smart Dragon 3 or SD-3, is a solid-propellant orbital launch vehicle developed by China Rocket, the commercial subsidiary of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT). It stands 31 metres…
Starship is a two-stage, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by the American company SpaceX. It is built and launched from Starbase in Texas and is intended as the successor to the company's Falcon 9 and…
Gravity-1 (引力一号, Yinli-1) is a solid-propellant expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed, built and operated by the Chinese aerospace company Orienspace. It stands 29.4 metres tall with a core diameter of 2.65 metres, weighs 405…
The Long March 12 (LM-12 or CZ-12) is a Chinese medium-lift kerolox launch vehicle built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. It stands 62 m tall, weighs 433 tonnes at liftoff and comprises two stages. It can place at least…
New Glenn is a family of two-stage partially reusable launch vehicles developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. It is named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. All versions use seven-meter…
The Long March 8A (CZ-8A) is an upgraded version of the Chinese Long March 8 launcher — that is, a specific configuration of that family rather than a standalone rocket. The base vehicle, the Long March 8, was developed by the China…
Ariane 64 (A64) is the heavy configuration of Ariane 6, the European expendable launch system developed for the European Space Agency and CNES, manufactured by a consortium of European companies led by ArianeGroup and operated by…
Soyuz 2.1b/Volga is not a distinct rocket but a specific configuration: a Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle fitted with the Volga upper stage. Soyuz-2 is the Russian series of expendable medium-lift launch vehicles and the seventh major iteration…
Soyuz-5, also known as Irtysh and formerly codenamed Fenix in Russian and Sunkar in Kazakh, is a Russian medium-lift launch vehicle developed by RKTs Progress. It is intended to replace the Ukrainian-built Zenit and to serve as the basis…
The Zhuque-2E Block 2 is the latest configuration of the Zhuque-2, the medium-class orbital launch vehicle built by the Chinese company LandSpace and the first methane-fuelled rocket to reach orbit. Like the rest of the family it is a…
The Long March 12B (CZ-12B) is a Chinese reusable medium-lift to heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Commercial Rocket Co., Ltd. (CACL), a commercial joint venture operating under the…
The H3-30 is a specific configuration of the H3, the Japanese medium-lift launch vehicle developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as the successor to the H-IIA and H-IIB. H3 configurations are identified by two digits and a…
The Long March 10B (CZ-10B) is a Chinese partially reusable, two-stage medium-lift launch vehicle. It is the third member of the Long March 10 series and is derived from technologies developed for the Long March 10A — that is, it is a…
Vikram-1 (also written Vikram-I) is a four-stage, expendable small-lift orbital launch vehicle developed by the Indian company Skyroot Aerospace. Its first three stages burn solid propellant, while the fourth acts as a liquid kick stage…
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