As NASA’s Artemis II mission progresses, insurers are gaining a clearer view of how risk may be structured beyond Earth orbit, with the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years now moving through a critical phase.
Launched on April 1, the mission marks a key step in NASA’s push towards sustained lunar activity and a precursor to future landing missions, while also serving as a live test of how liability, aggregation and underwriting models respond to a more complex space environment.
Denis Bousquet (pictured top, right), global chief underwriting officer for space at AXA XL, said liability in space is governed by international treaties that define “launching state” responsibility, meaning multiple states can share liability within a single mission.
“The liability regime is not that complex, but has never been tested in a situation, for example when we have several launching states in a single mission,” he said.
That gap between legal clarity and real-world application is becoming more relevant as missions bring together multiple contractors, jurisdictions and stakeholders. National regulation is also evolving, with countries such as Italy introducing legislation requiring operators to take steps to reduce the risk of third-party damage.
Even so, the underlying exposure remains difficult to quantify, particularly as new technologies cannot be fully tested on the ground.
Alongside liability, insurers are also tracking how commercial expansion is reshaping aggregation risk. The growth of low Earth orbit constellations and increasingly powerful launch systems is concentrating exposure, although relatively low individual satellite values mean the market remains willing to provide cover.
More concerning are emerging threats, particularly those capable of triggering multi-asset losses.
“There are emerging risks, that the industry is monitoring. The growing number of space objects, including space debris, is increasing the risk of collision and one event could create a cascade effect damaging several satellites,” Bousquet said.
He added that insurers are already seeing evidence of this trend. “We see an increasing number of failures that are likely due to a collision with a space object.”
Another developing concern is space weather, as satellites become more digital and therefore more sensitive to radiation.
“The other emerging risk is related to space weather, as satellites are becoming more and more digital and consequently very sensitive to radiation coming from space,” Bousquet said.
“This is a particular concern when a solar flare occurs as such event can create damages to several satellites simultaneously and human activity on earth can be disturbed due to the associated loss of services, such as communication and navigation.”
Despite these challenges, insurers are continuing to adapt underwriting approaches in a market with limited historical data. Premiums remain weighted towards first-party failure, with third-party liability representing a smaller share, while modelling increasingly relies on a combination of engineering and mathematical approaches to reflect rapid technological change.
“Insurers are ready to update their analysis to cover such risks and these projects,” Bousquet said. “We are regularly approached to insure innovative missions such as moon missions and while the understanding of the space environment far away from earth still remains a challenge, moon mission can be assessed and insured.”
As Artemis II continues, it is becoming not only a milestone in human spaceflight, but an early indication of how insurers may be forced to respond to a rapidly evolving risk landscape beyond Earth.
