Insurers' salvage of AsiaSat 3 (HGS-1, 1998)
A satellite paid out as a total loss in 1997, taken over by its insurers and brought to geostationary orbit by two lunar flybys.
When a satellite is declared lost and the claim paid, the craft in principle belongs to the insurers, who become owners of an object in orbit they do not know how to operate. Salvage law then lets them seek a residual value from it. AsiaSat 3, left in an unusable orbit by a failed upper stage, is the textbook case: the insurers handed the craft to its manufacturer in exchange for a share of future profits. The maneuver consumed fuel meant for the operating life, which reduced the value of the recovered satellite. The case shows that the total loss of a satellite is an economic decision, made on possible trajectories, and not a mere physical finding.
Launched on December 24, 1997 by a Proton-K, AsiaSat 3 was left in an elliptical orbit inclined at 51.6 degrees by the failure of the Blok DM fourth stage and declared a total loss. Renamed HGS-1 and handed to Hughes Global Services, it was sent around the Moon on May 7, 1998, passing about 6,200 kilometers from its surface on May 13, then looped around it a second time; PanAmSat bought it in early 1999 as PAS-22.
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