In this special NEXUS episode, Aerospace’s Lori Gordon interviews UK space leaders Matt Archer and Colin Macleod on policy and regulatory frameworks for space governance as part of the 2025 Caribbean Space Summit from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Their conversation explored how Puerto Rico and other Caribbean states can become a leader in the commercial space industry through smart policy and learning from the successes of the UK’s own journey toward space sovereignty and other nations. 

“It’s about understanding how you want to accommodate your regulatory environment to suit the kind of customer path that you see,” said Archer, “and make sure that business model stacks up. But equally, in working with other regulators as Colin does, it’s starting to say, well, how can we learn about the best bits that match that, our intent as a nation? How do we align and create potential mutual recognition schemes? Or how do we start to make it easier on providers to reduce the barriers of coming to operate from a particular spaceport?”

Macleod noted since you can’t just copy-paste legislative or regulatory practices across international borders, collaborators from multiple countries need to get practical and pragmatic. “For example, using the expertise within my team on flight safety analysis, they can hopefully support other countries who might not have those capabilities and capacities there,” he said.

From the UK Government’s recent work with its space industry, Gordon observed, “In addition to the regulatory policy pieces, the technology pieces, which people always think about, it’s really critical to understand your stakeholder base…who you’re serving, who your customers are.”