A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload ( spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and systems such as vehicle assembly and fueling. Launch vehicles are engineered with advanced aerodynamics and technologies, which contribute to large operating costs. An orbital launch vehicle must lift its payload at least to the boundary of space, approximately and accelerate it to a horizontal velocity of at least . Suborbital vehicles launch their payloads to lower velocity or are launched at

elevation angle In mathematics, a spherical coordinate system is a coordinate system for three-dimensional space where the position of a point is specified by three numbers: the ''radial distance'' of that point from a fixed origin, its ''polar angle'' measu ...

s greater than horizontal. Practical orbital launch vehicles are

multistage rocket A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage i ...

s which use chemical propellants such as solid fuel, liquid

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...

, kerosene, liquid oxygen, or Hypergolic propellants. Launch vehicles are classified by their orbital payload capacity, ranging from small-, medium-, heavy- to super-heavy lift.

Mass to orbit

Launch vehicles are classed by NASA according to low Earth orbit payload capability:NASA Space Technology Roadmaps - Launch Propulsion Systems, p.11
"Small: 0-2t payloads, Medium: 2-20t payloads, Heavy: 20-50t payloads, Super Heavy: >50t payloads" *

Small-lift launch vehicle A small-lift launch vehicle is a rocket orbital launch vehicle that is capable of lifting or less (by NASA classification) or under (by Roscosmos classification) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). The next larger category consists of med ...

: < - e.g. Vega * Medium-lift launch vehicle: - e.g.

Soyuz ST Soyuz-2 ( GRAU index 14A14) is a modernized version of the Soviet Soyuz rocket. In its basic form, it is a three-stage launch vehicle for placing payloads into low Earth orbit. Compared to the previous versions of the Soyuz, the first-stage ...

Heavy-lift launch vehicle A heavy-lift launch vehicle, HLV or HLLV, is an orbital launch vehicle capable of lifting between (by NASA classification) or between (by Russian classification) into low Earth orbit (LEO).50t payloads" , operational heavy-lift launch vehicl ...

: > - e.g. Ariane 5 * Super-heavy lift vehicle: > - e.g. Saturn VHSF Final Report: Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation
October 2009, ''Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee'', p. 64-66: "5.2.1 The Need for Heavy Lift ... require a “super heavy-lift” launch vehicle ... range of 25 to 40 mt, setting a notional lower limit on the size of the super heavy-lift launch vehicle if refueling is available ... this strongly favors a minimum heavy-lift capacity of roughly 50 mt ..." Sounding rockets are similar to small-lift launch vehicles, however they are usually even smaller and do not place payloads into orbit. A modified

SS-520 S-Series is a fleet of sounding rockets funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that have been in service since the late 1960s. Manufactured by IHI Aerospace and operated by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). ...

sounding rocket was used to place a 4-kilogram payload (

TRICOM-1R TRICOM-1R, also known as Tasuki (COSPAR 2018-016A, SATCAT 43201), was a Japanese nanosatellite that was launched during the SS-520-5 sounding rocket test launch on 3 February 2018, with a mission to conduct store and forward data relay and Earth o ...

) into orbit in 2018.

General information

Orbital spaceflight An orbital spaceflight (or orbital flight) is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altit ...

requires a satellite or spacecraft payload to be accelerated to very high velocity. In the vacuum of space, reaction forces must be provided by the ejection of mass, resulting in the rocket equation. The physics of spaceflight are such that

rocket stages A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely ...

are typically required to achieve the desired orbit.

Expendable launch vehicle An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are either destroyed during reentry or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket st ...

s are designed for one-time use, with boosters that usually separate from their payload and disintegrate during atmospheric reentry or on contact with the ground. In contrast,

reusable launch vehicle A reusable launch vehicle have parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boos ...

boosters are designed to be recovered intact and launched again. The

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and pay ...

is an example reusable launch vehicle. For example, the European Space Agency is responsible for the

Ariane V Ariane 5 is a European heavy-lift space launch vehicle developed and operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It is launched from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana. It has been used to deliver payloads into ...

, and the United Launch Alliance manufactures and launches the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets.

Launch platform locations

Launchpads can be located on land (

spaceport A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport'', and even more so ''cosmodrome'', has traditionally been used for sites capable ...

), on a fixed ocean platform (

San Marco San Marco is one of the six sestieri of Venice, lying in the heart of the city as the main place of Venice. San Marco also includes the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Although the district includes Saint Mark's Square, that was never admin ...

), on a mobile ocean platform (

Sea Launch Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999–2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial lau ...

), and on a submarine. Launch vehicles can also be launched from the

air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing f ...

Flight regimes

A launch vehicle will start off with its payload at some location on the surface of the Earth. To reach orbit, the vehicle must travel vertically to leave the atmosphere and horizontally to prevent re-contacting the ground. The required velocity varies depending on the orbit but will always be extreme when compared to velocities encountered in normal life. Launch vehicles provide varying degrees of performance. For example, a satellite bound for Geostationary orbit (GEO) can either be directly inserted by the

upper stage A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage is ...

of the launch vehicle or launched to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). A direct insertion places greater demands on the launch vehicle, while GTO is more demanding of the spacecraft. Once in orbit, launch vehicle upper stages and satellites can have overlapping capabilities, although upper stages tend to have orbital lifetimes measured in hours or days while spacecraft can last decades.

Distributed launch

Distributed launch involves the accomplishment of a goal with multiple spacecraft launches. A large spacecraft such as the International Space Station can be constructed by assembling modules in orbit, or in-space

propellant transfer An orbital propellant depot is a cache of propellant that is placed in orbit around Earth or another body to allow spacecraft or the transfer stage of the spacecraft to be fueled in space. It is one of the types of space resource depots that ha ...

conducted to greatly increase the

delta-V Delta-''v'' (more known as " change in velocity"), symbolized as ∆''v'' and pronounced ''delta-vee'', as used in spacecraft flight dynamics, is a measure of the impulse per unit of spacecraft mass that is needed to perform a maneuver such a ...

capabilities of a cislunar or deep space vehicle. Distributed launch enables space missions that are not possible with single launch architectures. Mission architectures for distributed launch were explored in the 2000s and launch vehicles with integrated distributed launch capability built in began development in 2017 with the Starship design. The standard Starship launch architecture is to refuel the spacecraft in low Earth orbit to enable the craft to send high-mass payloads on much more energetic missions.

Return to launch site

After 1980, but before the 2010s, two orbital launch vehicles developed the capability to return to the launch site (RTLS). Both the US Space Shuttle—with one of its abort modes—and the Soviet Buran had a designed-in capability to return a part of the launch vehicle to the launch site via the mechanism of horizontal-landing of the spaceplane portion of the launch vehicle. In both cases, the main vehicle thrust structure and the large propellant tank were

expendable ''Expendable'' is a science fiction novel by the Canadian author James Alan Gardner, published in 1997 by HarperCollins Publishers under its various imprints.Avon Books; HarperCollins Canada; SFBC/AvoNova. Paperback edition 1997, Eos Books. It i ...

, as had been the standard procedure for all orbital launch vehicles flown prior to that time. Both were subsequently demonstrated on actual orbital nominal flights, although both also had an abort mode during launch that could conceivably allow the crew to land the spaceplane following an off-nominal launch. In the 2000s, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have privately developed a set of technologies to support vertical landing of the booster stage of a launch vehicle. After 2010, SpaceX undertook a development program to acquire the ability to bring back and vertically land a part of the

orbital launch vehicle: the first stage. The first successful landing was done in December 2015, since then several additional rocket stages landed either at a landing pad adjacent to the launch site or on a landing platform at sea, some distance away from the launch site. The

Falcon Heavy Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that is produced by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer. The rocket consists of two strap-on boosters made from Falcon 9 first stages, a center core also made from a Falc ...

is similarly designed to reuse the three cores comprising its first stage. On its

first flight The maiden flight, also known as first flight, of an aircraft is the first occasion on which it leaves the ground under its own power. The same term is also used for the first launch of rockets. The maiden flight of a new aircraft type is alw ...

in February 2018, the two outer cores successfully returned to the launch site landing pads while the center core targeted the landing platform at sea but did not successfully land on it. Blue Origin developed similar technologies for bringing back and landing their suborbital ''

New Shepard New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical lan ...

'', and successfully demonstrated return in 2015, and successfully reused the same booster on a second suborbital flight in January 2016. By October 2016, Blue had reflown, and landed successfully, that same launch vehicle a total of five times. It must however be noted that the launch trajectories of both vehicles are very different, with New Shepard going straight up and down, whereas Falcon 9 has to cancel substantial horizontal velocity and return from a significant distance downrange. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX also have additional reusable launch vehicles under development. Blue is developing the first stage of the orbital New Glenn LV to be reusable, with first flight planned for no earlier than 2020. SpaceX has a new super-heavy launch vehicle under development for missions to interplanetary space. The Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) is designed to support RTLS, vertical-landing and full reuse of ''both'' the booster stage and the integrated second-stage/large-spacecraft that are designed for use with the BFR. First launch is expected in the early 2020s.

References

External links

Timelapse captured from a satellite of a rocket carrying 35 satellites
{{Authority control Space launch vehicles Spaceflight