We drew Europe’s rockets to one scale, using the sizes their makers and agencies publish. SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Japan’s H3 and Rocket Lab’s Electron stand beside them for scale. Tap a rocket for its figures, or pick two or more to compare them in the table below.
Swipe or scroll the drawing sideways to see every rocket.
Data sheet
| Rocket | Flights to orbit | Height | Width | Mass at liftoff | Stages | Fuel | First-stage engines | Liftoff thrust | To low orbit | To sun-synchronous orbit | Reuse |
|---|
How we draw and count
We draw each rocket as a flat side view from the height and width its maker or agency publishes. Most stage lengths are our own measurements from official images, scaled to the official height. Ariane 62 has two boosters, one on each side, and Ariane 64 has four. PLD Space has not published the MIURA 5 fairing, so we draw its second stage and fairing as one part.
We show rockets that have not flown in the design their makers show today. Several have changed size before. Where sources disagree we show the figure the maker gives for the version we draw. RFA’s operations chief gave 36 m for the first RFA One in May 2026, which fits the rocket’s proportions in RFA’s own images. ESA and the UK Civil Aviation Authority still write about 30 m. Latitude’s website gives 30 m, while a June 2026 press report gave 19 m.
Payload figures are each maker’s own, at the orbit height it quotes, so they are close but not exact matches. “Liftoff thrust” adds up the first-stage engines and boosters. Values marked “est.” are our own calculation, for example engine count times thrust per engine. Flights to orbit count successful launches out of all orbital launch attempts, from Jonathan McDowell’s launch log of 2 October 2026. We split Ariane 6 flights by version: every flight in 2024 and 2025 was an Ariane 62, and Ariane 64 first flew on 12 February 2026.
Sources: the user’s manuals for Ariane 6, Vega C, Falcon 9 and Electron, and figures from ESA, CNES, DLR and JAXA. We also used UK Civil Aviation Authority licence papers for SaxaVord, filed company accounts, company websites and press kits, and named press where nothing firsthand exists.
