Space weather risk
Exposure of satellites to geomagnetic storms and solar activity, which can degrade or destroy spacecraft without any direct physical impact.
Space weather risk is the exposure of satellites and orbital infrastructure to swings in solar activity: solar flares, coronal mass ejections and the geomagnetic storms they trigger. Unlike collision or mechanical failure, this peril strikes without any direct physical impact. A geomagnetic storm heats and expands the upper atmosphere, which increases the drag on low-orbit satellites. It can make them lose altitude, or even reenter before they reach their operational orbit. Solar activity can also damage onboard electronics through induced voltage surges, disrupt communications and navigation, or throw off attitude sensors. The risk is sharpest for satellites still being deployed: they fly low and lack the propulsion to offset the added drag. For space insurers, this peril is hard to model. Severity tracks the solar cycle, which is hard to forecast over an annual policy. And a single event can hit an entire batch of newly deployed satellites at once, an accumulation driven by space weather rather than by a manufacturing failure.
In February 2022, a moderate geomagnetic storm increased the atmospheric drag on 49 newly launched Starlink satellites. Nearly 40 of them were lost within days, at a cost SpaceX estimated at roughly $50 million.
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