Near-earth Satellites

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Lord asks two good questions. On his first, a recent summit pointed to Europe making a commercial step change, launching and celebrating the zero debris treaty and ESA’s commitment to deliver a cargo return mission to the international space station. The main output from the ESA council, at ministerial level, was the approval of ESA’s director-general’s resolution on lifting Europe’s ambitions for a green and sustainable future, and access to space and space exploration. On the question about insurance, I am not familiar with that, so I will write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, these satellites are now set to fill space at a rate of over 1,000 a year until 2030. In the Government’s National Space Strategy in Action paper of July this year, the Minister, George Freeman, said:

“The UK will lead the pack on regulatory standards, promoting competition whilst ending the wild west nature of space today”.


How will the Government do that? How will they, for instance, get their space sustainability standard adopted internationally?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

As I said just a moment ago, we are world leaders in this. My honourable friend Minister George Freeman announced the first ever UK plan for space sustainability—an ambitious package showing UK leadership and commitment on this issue. The Minister also chairs the space sustainability round table, bringing together key members from industry, finance, insurance and academia to focus on the key issues of space sustainability. I assure the noble Lord that Great Britain is leading this way on this with our European and international partners.