Northrop Grumman Minotaur-C

Minotaur-C, short for Minotaur Commercial and formerly known as Taurus or Taurus XL, was a four stage solid fueled launch vehicle built in the United States by Orbital Sciences, now part of Northrop Grumman, and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It is based on the air-launched Pegasus rocket, with a zeroth stage in place of an airplane, and can carry a maximum payload of around 1,458 kilograms (3,214 lb) into low Earth orbit. Its first stage is a Castor 120 based on a Peacekeeper ICBM first stage, stages 2 and 3 are Orion-50 motors and stage 4 is an Orion 38. First launched in 1994, it completed seven of ten military and commercial missions, and three of four launches between 2001 and 2011 failed, including the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory missions, whose losses totalled US$700 million for NASA. The vehicle was rebranded Minotaur-C in 2014 with new avionics based on the Minotaur family, and it returned to flight in 2017 after a six year pause.