🚀Launchpad

📊 Analysis

Statistics & insights on rockets and organizations — technology, history, numbers.

Ariane 40

Retired

Aérospatiale

The Ariane 4 was an expendable space launch system, developed by the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), the French space agency, for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was manufactured by ArianeGroup and marketed by Arianespace. Since its first flight on 15 June 1988 until the final flight on 15 February 2003, it attained 113 successful launches out of 116 total launches.

Key figures

Total launches
7
Successes
7
Failures
0
Success rate
100.0 %
Success streak
7
Maiden flight
Jan 22, 1990
Reusable
No
Shortest launch interval ⓘ
77d 14h
Planned launches
0
Ariane, Ariane 4 family total
116 launches · 113 successes · 3 failures (6 variants)

🧐 Data check

Automatic plausibility checks — anomalies are surfaced transparently here:

  • ℹ️The figures above apply only to the “Ariane 40” variant. The Launch Library counts each variant separately — the Ariane, Ariane 4 family totals 116 launches across 6 variants.

Technology

Length
55.6 m
Diameter
3.8 m
Launch mass
245 t
Liftoff thrust
2,720 kN
Stages
2
LEO (low Earth orbit)
4,600 kg
GTO (geo transfer)
2,290 kg

Launches per year

of which in our database: 7

1990: 1 Successes119901991: 1 Successes119911993: 1 Successes119931995: 2 Successes219951998: 1 Successes119981999: 1 Successes11999
Successes Failures Other/planned

History & events

  1. Jan 22, 1990🚀 Maiden flightSPOT 2View launch

Sources