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what's the biggest risk? rocket failure during takeoff or telescope malfunction?


Ariane 5 rockets have accumulated 109 launches since 1996, 104 of which were successful, yielding a 95.4% success rate. Between April 2003 and December 2017, Ariane 5 flew 82 consecutive missions without failure, but the rocket suffered a partial failure in January 2018

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5


There are several big risks. It's impossible to rank them in a credible way.

Obviously there are all the usual launch risks. The cryogenics system has had a lot of development problems. The deployment is staggeringly complex and involves components that are not known for their robustness. Finally there is no repair option; one critical things goes wrong or is found to be misdesigned and that's it.


I believe the unfurling of the solar panels is one of the tricky parts.


Most rockets these days are pretty reliable. Ariane 5 only had one partial failure in 20 years I believe.




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