How NEPA Applies to U.S. Space Activities

Historically, there have been few examples in which the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, has been directly applied to space activity. Two recent executive orders have called on U.S. federal agencies to review how NEPA applies in this context. This Issue Brief reviews the NEPA process and provides a brief overview of historical and present intersections of NEPA with U.S. public and private space activities.

Note: To provide more detailed information, an expanded version of the timeline in this brief highlighting NEPA-related benchmarks and agency activity related to human behaviors in the space environment (Figure 1) is available as a separate 11” x 17” poster here. 

Author: Lindsay DeMarchi