Constellation insurance

February 2022: a geomagnetic storm brings down 38 of the 49 Starlink satellites launched on the 3rd, and the operator absorbs the loss. Constellation insurance treats a program of dozens, hundreds or thousands of satellites as a fleet portfolio, rather than as a stack of satellite-by-satellite policies. The model follows NewSpace economics: a single rocket now carries dozens of small satellites on a single launch, and one launch event concentrates a meaningful share of an entire program's insured value. The underwriter no longer prices the failure probability of a single high-value object, but the loss distribution across a homogeneous population, where a failure rate of a few percent per batch becomes an expected actuarial outcome rather than an exceptional claim. Policies are therefore often written around a launch campaign, a batch, or a rolling deployment window, with deductibles expressed in number of satellites rather than in value. The operator gets a lower unit cost of cover; the insurer takes on a new accumulation risk. A manufacturing defect across a mass-produced satellite bus, or an event affecting an entire batch at the same point in its orbit, can degrade a significant share of the insured fleet at once.