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Your sponsor is buying a scientific objective as well as flight hardware and engineering work. Insurance for a service error or damaged instrument is not a guarantee of the mission's result.
The Southern Agency can help you align your professional and property insurance with the specific engineering and testing risks of your spacecraft projects.
Your developer team designs and validates robotic spacecraft for long-duration scientific missions, blending intensive software and engineering work with precise fabrication. Managing specialized prototypes and sponsor data requires clear contract definitions regarding deliverables and acceptance.
The Southern Agency can review your engineering and development services to help select appropriate insurance for your mission support. For example, we can help you evaluate professional liability for modeling services versus product liability for flight hardware.
A modeling, navigation or software flaw may appear only in flight and prevent a scientific objective. Remote correction depends on the actual communications, software, and hardware constraints. A sponsor can bring a professional claim without every alleged loss being insured.
A workmanship or component defect can cause a probe to fail. Separate liability for injury or damage to other property from the probe's own value, replacement duties, and promised mission performance.
Specialized labs, prototypes, and one-of-a-kind scientific instruments are costly and slow to rebuild if damaged or destroyed.
Delicate probe assemblies shipped to integration and launch partners face damage or loss in transit before they ever fly.
Mission architectures, instrument designs, and sponsor data are valuable targets for cyber intrusion and intellectual-property theft.
Lab fabrication, handling, and test operations expose staff to machinery, chemical, and lifting hazards.
Policies to ask about. Which ones fit depends on your operations, your contracts, and the carrier’s forms.
These hypothetical examples are not agency claim results. Whether a loss is covered depends on the facts, policy terms, and applicable exclusions.
A sponsor alleges a software flaw in the developer's design caused a probe to miss its target and seeks compensation for the mission loss. Professional liability expressly insuring those engineering and software services may pay covered defense costs and damages. The declared mission, claim, and space or performance exclusions must fit; the allegation does not itself make the full investment, a refund or the cost of correcting the work insured.
A scientific instrument is damaged in transit to the integration partner, creating repair or replacement costs before integration. Inland marine or cargo covering that journey and property interest may pay covered physical damage. Ownership, risk transfer, values, conveyance, packing, and temporary storage must fit the terms. A carrier's liability and the developer's goods insurance are different protections.
A fire in the development lab destroys a prototype and test fixtures, creating rebuilding and replacement costs. Property insurance may pay covered physical damage to the insured interests. Development-stage values, customer ownership, and the fire terms must fit. Payment for the physical items does not automatically fund all repeated research, delayed milestones or missed science.
Start with the work you do and the questions your current policies leave unanswered. Carrier options depend on your location, risk, and underwriting. Explore our approach.
A business selling engineering judgment and delivering hardware has both service and product questions to address. Professional liability may pay covered claims from errors in insured services; product liability may pay covered injury or damage to other property caused by insured hardware. The actual roles, mission phases, and exclusions must fit. Neither heading alone establishes payment for the failed probe, a promised scientific result or every sponsor demand.
An instrument can incur costly physical damage before integration or launch. Transit insurance may pay a covered repair or replacement loss for the insured interest. Identify the land, air and sea legs, countries, packing, loading, temporary storage, values, and risk-transfer terms. A carrier's liability declaration or an inland marine heading does not establish every journey or the later launch and mission phases.
Property insurance may pay covered physical damage to declared lab assets, prototypes, fixtures, and scientific instruments. Identify ownership, development-stage values, and insured causes. Customer articles, damage during testing, rejected designs, and repeated research need their own terms; an insured lab building does not establish protection for all project costs.
Cyber may pay covered investigation, incident response, restoration, and privacy or network-liability costs after an insured event. The data, systems, and providers must fit. A proprietary design is not necessarily personal information, and response costs do not automatically replace the design's competitive value, lost scientific results or damaged mission hardware.
Read the actual mission, grant and subcontract terms for requested limits, parties, and endorsements, as well as milestones, indemnities, warranties, and repayment duties. Compare those requests with the declared services, products, mission phases, and policy documents. A certificate does not amend coverage, and meeting a requested limit does not prove every accepted obligation is insured.
A design or software problem can prevent a mission objective and lead to a sponsor claim after substantial development work. Remote workarounds can sometimes restore functions; physical access, communications, and correction options depend on the actual mission. Professional liability expressly covering the work may pay insured defense and damages, but mission failure alone does not prove insured negligence or reimbursement of the mission's full value.
Bring your questions, current policies, and relevant contracts. An agent can review coverage terms, exclusions, and the information carriers ask for, then explain the options available to you.
