Space Regulatory Sandboxes, including the Re-Entry Regulatory Sandbox and the Multi-Mission Licensing Regulatory Sandbox

The Contracting Authority awards two contracts for the development of regulatory sandboxes.

As part of this programme, we are intending to develop two sandboxes focused on regulatory activity within financial year 26/27. Lot 1 will focus on re-entry and lot 2 will focus on multi-mission licensing.

For those who are aware of the previously published notice, this was issued as a multi-lot tender. UKSA offered lot 1 as the re-entry sandbox and lot 2 as the multi-mission licencing.

Moving from a satellite-by-satellite approach to licensing poses a range of questions and matters that we need to address. A time-limited regulatory sandbox provides a proportionate mechanism for the CAA and HMG to work with the space sector to develop and test potential new approaches in controlled conditions that do not affect live licensing decisions. Recently, the Rendezvous Proximity Operations Sandbox concluded and brought together regulators and industry participants to test regulatory approaches in a controlled environment, generating practical evidence on what works and where processes can be improved. It has strengthened collaboration, reduced uncertainty for participants, and provided a clear evidence base to inform future regulatory reform and more efficient licensing frameworks. This process has paved the way for future collaboration between HMG, the regulator and industry.

One such approach is multi-mission licensing of satellites, under which a single licence could authorise a defined set of related activities rather than requiring separate licences for each mission. The sandbox provides an opportunity to explore how such an approach could operate in practice, including how similarities between missions can be assessed, what ongoing monitoring would look like, and how variation can be managed over time.

Evidence generated through the sandbox will help turn the overall policy aim into a practical regulatory approach that can be applied in real cases. It will help identify the conditions under which multiple missions could be authorised and regulated under a single licence, the extent to which missions could vary while remaining within that licence, and the points at which further assessment may be required in order for the regulator to fulfil its statutory obligations.

Testing this with industry input will help ensure that any future approach reflects technical design choices, operational approaches and commercial constraints. This should reduce the risk of rework, challenge or delay at implementation stage and improve confidence that any future model is credible, scalable and usable in live licensing, while maintaining assurance.