Jul 10, 2026
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is pulling double duty as a space exploration program and a climate risk assessment tracker, potentially leading to lower home insurance costs.
The federal government’s space agency was tapped as a partner in a public/private effort to launch the Center for Innovation in Risk, Catastrophes, and Decisions (CIRCAD) collaborative.
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Funded by the National Science Foundation and private industry, mainly large insurance and wealth management companies, CIRCAD’s mission is to develop innovative solutions, data, and tools for managing climate risk and enhancing earth-bound solutions to tackle the problem. NASA’s involvement provides essential earth science data and models, as noted by Forbes.
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“This multi-disciplinary collaboration seeks to break down silos, uniting atmospheric scientists, engineers, and economists to deliver real-world research for anticipating and recovering from catastrophic events,” the report noted.
NASA has long been monitoring Earth’s climate from space and tracking acute and chronic hazards arising from climate change.
“Developing resilience to changing, climate-driven risk profiles through application of NASA Earth Observations (EO) is a primary focus of the NASA Climate Resilience Program,” a 2025 Harvard research report noted. “NASA’s fleet of Earth observing missions and modeling activities produces a substantial repository of data that can be transformed into actionable knowledge to support climate-informed community resilience decisions.”
According to the CIRCAD website, founding partners include American Family Insurance, Aon, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), Liberty Mutual, NASA, USAA, and WTW. The collaboration will work together on four interdisciplinary projects addressing critical challenges in climate risk, resilience, and decision-making.
How NASA’s work with CIRCAD may aid homeowners
Home insurance rates have risen 46% in the last five years, to approximately $3,000, according to LendingTree. That’s about double the increase that would have been expected because of total inflation over those years. That’s causing U.S. homeowners to look for ways to save money: Reducing their coverage, opting for higher deductibles, and shopping around for less expensive policies.
Consequently, any help from CIRCAD and NASA in tracking meteorological patterns could help warn governments and insurance companies about abnormal weather patterns that lead to natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Ideally, the data provided could help insurance companies identify and streamline disaster-related homeowners’ insurance policies, providing consumers with better coverage.
“Insurance pricing has traditionally been built on historical claims data,” Chris Bacon, chief operating officer at home insurance provider Openly, told Moneywise. “The problem is that climate patterns are shifting fast, and historical data isn’t always a reliable guide anymore.”
Bacon said NASA’s satellite data could offer something different. “Now, we’ll have access to real-time information about a specific property’s actual conditions today — things like how dry vegetation is, how saturated soil is, or how exposed a location is to extreme heat,” he noted. “For homeowners in areas that are genuinely lower-risk, that kind of precision should mean pricing that reflects their actual situation, not the average risk of everyone around them.”
Historically, advanced climate data has been a double-edged sword for insurance: while it can raise premiums or limit coverage in high-risk areas, the same precision also works in the consumer’s favor by identifying lower-risk properties that deserve better rates. “As carriers develop more granular tools and data, they are discovering opportunities to offer coverage in areas where traditional insurers still hesitate,” Bacon said.
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Advanced tools like CIRCAD can further distinguish between a resilient home on higher ground and a vulnerable property just a few blocks away. “Ultimately, the value of modern risk modeling is its ability to accurately align pricing with the risk,” Bacon added. “The real test isn’t how sophisticated the model is; it’s whether homeowners in safer communities start seeing those benefits reflected in their choices and their premiums.”
Other insurance industry professionals agree, as NASA drills down into complex weather data.
“As an insurance broker, I see how broad pricing can miss the mark,” said John Espenschied, owner of Insurance Brokers Group in St. Charles, Mo. “A home in a safer part of town can get lumped in with homes that face much more flood, fire, or storm danger. NASA data could help insurers look closer at real risks, like heavy rain, hail, wildfire conditions, and changing weather patterns.”
That may mean some customers are offered lower rates, while others will be incentivized to make improvements that lower the risk damage, such as a stronger roofing, better drainage, or clearing brush away from the house. “A roof that holds up in a hailstorm should not get treated like one made of crackers,” Espenschied noted.
Even so, better data cannot fix every homeowner’s insurance problem.
“Some places face so much repeated storm, flood, or fire damage that private insurance may remain expensive or hard to get. In those areas, stronger building rules, home improvement grants, and public help may be needed too,” Espenschied. “The best outcome is simple: use better information to keep more homes insured before disaster strikes.”
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A former Wall Street bond trader, Brian O'Connell is the author of two best-selling books: “The 401k Millionaire” and “CNBC’s Creating Wealth.” His work is featured on national finance and business platforms like TheStreet.com, CBS News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
