re: If history is any indication
There are two ways of doing unmanned space missions. One is the billion-dollar Viking-type ultra-high tech solution. The other is the low-tech cheap solution. Naturally, one would expect more failures with the second mode, but the key to that one is having three or four vehicles setting out, and a few spares sitting in the warehouse.
Heck, even the Viking program had two probes.
The good news is sometimes the cheaper low-tech approaches are more reliable than the fancy stuff. We'll see. Hoping for the best...