We use necessary cookies to make our website work. We'd also like to use optional cookies to understand how you use it, and to help us improve it.

For more information, please read our cookie policy.

UK Civil Aviation Regulations

These are published by the CAA on our UK Regulations pages. EU Regulations and EASA Access Guides published by EASA no longer apply in the UK. Our website and publications are being reviewed to update all references. Any references to EU law and EASA Access guides should be disregarded and where applicable the equivalent UK versions referred to instead.



Any licence or permission we grant will include terms and conditions. Conditions are statements or requirements relating to your activities either prelaunch, in flight or post-launch (or all such times).

Our role is to monitor spaceflight activities (launch and orbital), spaceport operation, and the provision of range control services and associated activities. We have a duty ensure you that you comply with the terms and conditions of your licence or permission on an ongoing basis and are responsible for helping to protect public safety and national security. You will need to send us evidence of your compliance with the terms of your licence or permission, and we’ll carry out inspections of your sites before and after launch or mission activity.

We carry out annual checks on all UK licensed spacecraft to meet our obligations under the UN treaties to monitor and supervise the activities of nationals, most notably Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty.

This includes monitoring the health of the spacecraft. All licensed orbital operators will be required to provide information regarding their satellites by way of a ‘Health Check’, at least on an annual basis. We require only subsystem level reporting, but welcome exception reporting at lower levels.

We use a Red-Amber-Green health check form. This is emailed to the operator annually. In addition to this, we request a copy of the third-party liability insurance policy upon its renewal each year. This is so that we can assess the policy and ensure that it continues to meet our normal requirements.