2 March 2026
The UK space sector is an important part of the country’s economy, already generating over £18 billion income and employing over 55,500 people. Rocket launches focussed on putting satellites into Earth’s orbit will support the 18% of the UK’s gross domestic product which relies on satellite services. Satellites provide everything from Earth observation images, weather forecasting and climate science, to continuous position, navigation and timing data.
With the global space economy projected to reach an estimated $1.1 trillion by 2045, the next decade offers extraordinary potential for accelerating innovation, investment and productivity. As space agencies and commercial partners advance plans for crewed missions to the Moon and future exploration of Mars, new opportunities are set to emerge across the wider space sector.
As the UK space sector accelerates, so too does the need for clear, practical guidance on how to carry out Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE), one of the seven mandatory tests that applicants for a UK spaceport or launch operator licence must pass under the Space Industry Act (2018) and a process essential to maintaining the public legitimacy of UK launch operations.
To meet this need, a new space industry‑led working group has brought together specialists from environmental impact assessment and the UK space ecosystem. Drawing on project experience and lessons learned from early UK licence applications, the group has developed the first dedicated good practice guidance specifically for AEE, which fills a critical void in agreed best practice methodology and sets the basis for robust and responsible environmental assessment as the industry matures.
The guidance sits alongside the statutory AEE requirements and aims to support practitioners in the production of transparent, proportionate, and technically robust AEEs. From identifying potential effects to setting out credible measures to avoid, mitigate or offset significant effects, the guidance will help ensure environmental considerations are fully integrated into mission planning and support applicants in delivering environmentally responsible operations while keeping pace with this rapidly evolving sector.
As the UK’s first resource of its kind, the guidance marks an important step in shaping consistent, evidence‑based environmental practice for the UK space sector. But it is also intended to evolve. With UK sights set on being the pre-eminent European location for satellite launches, thorough and robust AEE is essential in ensuring the UK becomes a global beacon for sustainable sub-orbital and orbital launches in this decade and beyond.
This guidance will be valuable not only for space sector professionals, but for anyone interested in applying impact assessment expertise to new and emerging sectors.
