New US medium-lift rockets emerge 13 years after Antares debut
A new generation of medium-lift rockets is coming online in the United States, ending a 13-year gap since the debut of the Antares vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. These upcoming vehicles are starkly different from the Antares, which relied on Soviet-era engines and a core stage manufactured in Ukraine. The Antares 100-series variant used engines originally built during the Apollo era. Aerojet acquired and refurbished these engines in the 1990s for use on a rocket launching in the 2010s. On the fifth launch of an Antares rocket in 2014, the vehicle exploded. The Antares is described as the last of a dying breed of medium-lift rockets in the United States, a category defined by a lift capacity of 2 to 20 metric tons.
A new generation of medium-lift rockets is coming online in the United States, ending a 13-year gap since the debut of the Antares vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. These upcoming vehicles are starkly different from the Antares, which relied on Soviet-era engines and a core stage manufactured in Ukraine. The Antares 100-series variant used engines originally built during the Apollo era. Aerojet acquired and refurbished these engines in the 1990s for use on a rocket launching in the 2010s. On the fifth launch of an Antares rocket in 2014, the vehicle exploded. The Antares is described as the last of a dying breed of medium-lift rockets in the United States, a category defined by a lift capacity of 2 to 20 metric tons.
Filed by the newsroom of MarketPR on October 20, 2026. Source: arstechnica.com. Indicative figures are not investment advice.