Environmental compliance issues in the commercial space industry

Abstract

In view of increasing commercial role in the space industry, the U.S. Government instituted the Office of Commercial Space Transportation's (OCST) licensing process subject to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The OCST licenses and regulates launch operations and launch sites. The NEPA affects primarily the licensing of commercial space launches, the operation of commercial launch sites, and, to some extent, new payloads. This paper discusses the impact of NEPA on the OCST and the measures taken to insure compliance with NEPA.