Insurance cover for satellite hit

If a satellite falls on my head, will my insurance cover me? I am worried that with thousands of objects circling the earth at low orbits, the probability of such a disaster is increasing by the day.

I could be hit any time. It could be while stepping out to pick up the grocery, or while driving at 120km/h on the Emirates Road or even when sleeping in my bed. Obviously no one can dream of outrunning an object travelling at close to 40,000km/h, much faster than sound at about 1,250km/h.

Though it is more glamorous to be hit by space debris than by a speeding truck, the result could be pretty much the same. And I do not want even to think of living to enjoy the glory.

I have been worried about being hit by a falling satellite ever since the US Navy claimed to have shot a runaway spy satellite out of the skies on February 20. They said it was to prevent the satellite's toxic fuel tank from hitting the earth, causing damage to human life and property.

Space debris, I read, are pieces of defunct satellite and discarded components from space missions that orbit the earth.

There is always the possibility of some of these orbiting terrors losing their altitude and re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. And there is always the possibility of a big enough object surviving the re-entry trauma and crashing on the Earth's surface.

And being somewhere close to such a hit has been one of the nightmares I have been having recently. According to an estimate, there are some 17,000 tractable pieces of space junk. Earth-based radars can track only pieces of junk that are at least 10cm in size.

Worried about the hazard, I broached the subject with a friend who I believed had some knowledge of the law. He told me the insurance cover would be valid so long as a hit by a body falling from the heavens was not considered a force majeure, or an act of God.

Now that was confusing to me. He explained that this was a concept in law of contracts - an insurance deal being a contract between the insured and the insurance company - which denotes a happening "beyond the control of a contracting party" or an "act of God". In such an eventuality, he said, a party could be absolved of his contractual liability without that party having to pay the stipulated damages in the event of a violation.

But he tried to console me. Statisticians, he said, tell us that the chance of a human taking space debris hit was once in a trillion compared to once in billion chance of being hit by lightning.

Massive bill

This, he said, was because 70 per cent of the Earth's surface was water and much of the rest uninhabited. Therefore the chance of one of the more than six billion humans living on Earth being close enough to a debris landing site was next to nothing. Still, that did not make it safe enough for my comfort.

I then called a reputed firm of attorneys to find out if my insurance would cover such a hit. I was connected to an "insurance law practitioner" after being buffeted between extensions and a seemingly endless wait. By contrast, my exchanges with the expert were brief. As soon as I introduced the matter to him, he told me that I would be charged for any advice he gave.

He said he could even charge me for his having taken the call. I thanked him briefly and put the phone down thinking that being hit by a massive bill could be more disastrous than any space debris.

Next I gingerly tried a top executive of an insurance company. Fortunately, the official was very cordial though he would not like to be quoted anywhere. However, he told me that the insurance law treated a satellite hit the same way it treated a hit by a piano falling out of an apartment window.

Both cases would be treated as accidents and would be eligible for insurance cover unless the company showed that reasonable precautions to evade the eventuality had not been taken.

Now what were the likely precautions? Not stepping out of home once there is an alert of a satellite fall? But even a tennis ball-sized lump of debris at that speed could raze a building. So I am still confused.