Tucson Medium Launch Vehicle
Phantom Space
Phantom Space's Tucson — a medium liquid-propellant orbital launch vehicle targeting 3,000 kg to LEO, positioned above the small Daytona rocket.
Key figurescomparable across the catalogue
- Payload capacity
- 3,000 kg
Normalised to common units so this product can be compared with others in its category. The supplier's own wording is below.
As published by the supplier
- Propellants
- Liquid (specific propellant TBD)
- Payload to LEO
- ~3,000 kg (target)
- Market
- Mid-market constellation deployment (between small and Falcon 9 class)
- Founder
- Jim Cantrell (former SpaceX founding team member)
- Predecessor
- Daytona (small launch vehicle, 450 kg to LEO)
- Founded
- 2019, Tucson, Arizona, USA
About
Tucson is Phantom Space’s medium-class orbital launch vehicle, larger than the company’s Daytona small launcher. Tucson targets approximately 3,000 kg to LEO using liquid propellants, targeting the mid-market between small dedicated launchers (Electron, KAIROS class) and larger workhorse vehicles (Falcon 9 class).
Phantom Space (founded 2019, Tucson, Arizona) was founded by CEO Jim Cantrell (former SpaceX founding team member who recruited Elon Musk to the company) and takes an approach of rapid development using commercial off-the-shelf components wherever possible. The company’s strategy is to develop both Daytona and Tucson in parallel, targeting a combination of dedicated small satellite customers and rideshare aggregation.
Tucson is positioned for constellation deployment missions where multiple satellites need to go to the same orbital shell — a configuration poorly served by very small dedicated launches but not large enough to justify a Falcon 9 class vehicle. Phantom Space has manufacturing operations in Tucson and has disclosed a military relationship with the US DoD for responsive launch contracts.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.