🚀Launchpad

📊 Analysis

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

Ariane 44L

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
40
Successes
39
Failures
1
Success rate
97.5 %
Success streak
37
Maiden flight
Jun 5, 1989
Reusable
No
Shortest launch interval ⓘ
18d 21h
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 44L” variant. The Launch Library counts each variant separately — the Ariane, Ariane 4 family totals 116 launches across 6 variants.

Technology

Length
58.7 m
Diameter
3.8 m
Launch mass
484 t
Liftoff thrust
5,395 kN
Stages
2
LEO (low Earth orbit)
10,200 kg
GTO (geo transfer)
4,950 kg

Launches per year

of which in our database: 40

1989: 2 Successes219891990: 2 Successes1990: 1 Failures31991: 4 Successes419911992: 3 Successes31993: 2 Successes219931994: 2 Successes21995: 1 Successes119951996: 5 Successes51997: 3 Successes319971998: 2 Successes21999: 2 Successes219992000: 1 Successes12001: 3 Successes320012002: 6 Successes62003: 1 Successes12003
Successes Failures Other/planned

History & events

  1. Jun 5, 1989🚀 Maiden flightSuperbird A & DFS-Kopernikus 1View launch
  2. Feb 22, 1990💥 FailureSuperbird B & BS 2xView launch

Sources