Mumbai, October 10, 2008 –IR Summary/Agencies -  India is to send the Chandrayaan 1 project, a spacecraft to Moon, which is likely to lift off on October 22 without any insurance cover. No International insurance Company got ready to give an insurance cover to Chandrayaan 1 project, perhaps being highly risky proposition or some other serious reasons. 

Such projects are either 100% success or 100% failure, normally the insurance cover is given to those projects which can afford to pay very heavy premium and over and above, it is India’s first attempt of Chandrayaan, hence no insurance company came forward to take such a heavy risk. Some efforts were made by the Govt. but no International Insurance Agency accepted the proposal.

Keeping many factors into mind including the failure of Insat 4C in July ’06, International  Insurance companies were reluctant to take the risk and  avoided to come forward with any proposal to give insurance cover to Rs. 386 crore project to India. The cost of the Project includes 100 crore for establishing Indian Deep Space Network near Bangalore to receive signals from the satellites.

When asked why Chandaraan is not insured, an Indian Space Research Organisation official told ET from Bangalore that as Chandrayaan-1 is a scientific project, it would not require any insurance cover.

“We have not taken any cover for this project,” S Satish, spokesperson of ISRO said. The Made-in-India rocket bearing the lunar spacecraft will lift off as per schedule provided the weather is right. As per the plan, the 1.5-ton Chandrayaan spacecraft will take approximately eight days to travel about 240,000 miles before reaching its final orbit 60 miles above the surface of the moon. A crash landing of a lunar vehicle on the moon's surface is also planned.

According to insurance officials the cost of insuring space launches is extremely high due to high rate of failure. Also the risk almost entirely reinsured since Indian markets do not have the depth to cover launches on their own. Because of the high rate of failure the premium rates vary between 25-33% of the sum insured. “ISRO has a good track record of launches and can go for self insurance."

The statement of the official that their department did not get the insurance cover for Chandrayaan purposely and intentionally seems to be doubtful. None of the Insurance Companies who insure such projects came forward, and in addition India was not prepared to pay heavy premium of 30% or so. India's last major launch which aimed to place Insat 4C failed in July ‘06 after the Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle developed a snag and that might be one of the reasons for any insurance company to come forward for the moon project of India to give an insurance cover.