The Israeli communications satellite owned by Amos-Spacecom, Amos-5, has suffered what appears to be a total failure in orbit on 21 November 2015. All telemetry from the spacecraft was cut off at 0445 GMT. The spacecraft, which was launched in 2011 and built by the Russian spacecraft manufacturer ISS Reshetnev using its Express 1000H bus design, had previously suffered from power faults to its two main electrical buses which affected its attitude control system. While a similar event is suspected, generally sudden power failures are rare, and the official cause of loss has yet to be determined.
The Amos-5 spacecraft was insured to a value of US$158.5 million with about three quarter of this figure insured by an annual in orbit policy with the rest insured by a launch plus five year policy. In addition to this, Seradata understands that there may be some additional insurance taken out to protect incentives payments for the manufacturer and also an insurance taken out against the payment of additional premium which could be due depending on the exact cause of failure.
If this event does yield a total insurance loss at US$158.5 million then, according to loss data on Seradata’s SpaceTrak database, total losses are now expected to be US$663 million for 2015 (on a calendar rather than year of account basis). The year will thus be classed as an overall net market loss as overall premium figures received or expected are not likely to exceed this figure.
While the owners of the spacecraft, Amos-Spacecom, were properly insured, the fact that the firm will not have a replacement satellite ready for at least two years raised concern about its revenues and, as a result, the firm’s share price fell by over 30%.
