Space Debris

Lord Markham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that point. As it stands, DSIT is playing a major role in developing UK space surveillance. This covers debris and satellites. Through the space clusters and the infra- structure fund, we are backing new ground-based observatories and analytics platforms. We are also co-ordinating with the UK Space Agency, academia and the defence sector to integrate civil and military space surveillance assets into a national capability, thereby reducing dependence on foreign data and supporting strategic autonomy.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I will attempt to boldly follow the line of questioning of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, around the US building into its licensing requirements that commercial operators take this into account. It has a regulation that there is five years for the de-orbiting of low earth orbit satellites. We do not do that: we work on a 25-year basis. Surely it is about time we tried to catch up in this area.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. We have to work with international partners, whether the US, Japan or the European Space Agency. Currently, the Government are developing space sustainable standards with commercial space sector investors and insurers as part of our wider regulatory reforms. We must bear in mind that reforms have to be outcome-based and have clarity and certainty. This is why we are attracting a lot of foreign-based companies that are establishing operations in the UK, such as Astroscale, which I mentioned earlier.