Why space is becoming an ESG story for public markets
As NASA’s Artemis II mission swings around the Moon and puts space back on front pages, it is worth asking a very Earth-bound question: what does the new space race look like through an ESG lens? Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026, marking the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years, and this week’s flyby has revived the sense that space is back as a serious industrial theme, not just a science project.

Numerous listed players
That matters because this is no longer only a private-markets story. Even before any potential SpaceX IPO, public markets already offer meaningful exposure to space: Rocket Lab spans launch, spacecraft and satellite components; Redwire is building space infrastructure; Planet and BlackSky sell Earth-observation data and analytics; Iridium, Viasat and Globalstar are satellite communications plays; and AST SpaceMobile is trying to build direct-to-device connectivity from orbit. This is not yet a huge sector, but it is large enough for equity investors to care about the externalities as well as the growth narrative.
The sunny side
The bull case, from an ESG perspective, is real. Satellites can help monitor deforestation, track methane leaks, improve disaster response and extend connectivity to remote areas where terrestrial networks are weak or uneconomic. OECD notes that satellite networks are an important broadband option for rural and remote communities, while Planet explicitly positions itself around daily Earth data and insights. In the best version of the story, space is not an escape from Earth’s problems. It is a tool for measuring and managing them.
And the economic backdrop is only getting bigger. McKinsey estimates the global space economy could grow from about $630 billion in 2023 to $1.8 trillion by 2035. That kind of expansion is exactly when ESG questions stop being optional. Once an industry is scaling fast enough to attract mainstream equity capital, investors have to ask not just whether it can grow, but what costs it creates on the way.
The darker side
Those costs are increasingly hard to ignore. NASA’s own 2024 technical memorandum says rocket launches and re-entering satellites and upper stages emit gases and aerosols into every layer of the atmosphere, with potential effects on climate and ozone. NOAA-linked research similarly finds that black carbon from rockets can accumulate in the stratosphere, absorb solar radiation and warm the surrounding air. Space may still be a small emitter compared with aviation or heavy industry, but that is not the right benchmark. The more relevant point is that launch activity is rising, and so are the associated atmospheric impacts.
Then there is orbital congestion — the environmental issue space enthusiasts too often treat as somebody else’s problem. ESA’s 2025 Space Environment Report says about 40,000 objects are now tracked in orbit, including roughly 11,000 active payloads, while the estimated population of debris fragments larger than 1 cm exceeds 1.2 million. ESA’s conclusion is blunt: active debris removal is now required to stop the situation deteriorating further. In other words, the industry is not just using space. It is polluting it.
The social case is more awkward than the marketing usually suggests. Yes, there are obvious benefits in connectivity, climate monitoring and emergency response. But there is also a fair question about social utility. Not every mission that is technologically impressive is socially valuable. Investors should be able to distinguish between companies that help solve terrestrial problems and those whose business models depend on ever more launches, ever larger constellations, or vanity-driven demand with unclear public benefit. “Because it is cool” is not an ESG framework.
Conclusions
That pushes governance to the centre of the story. For space companies, ESG is not just about carbon disclosures. It is about whether management teams can show credible stewardship of launch intensity, fuel mix, debris mitigation, collision avoidance, end-of-life disposal and the real-world usefulness of their services. The investable question is not whether space is good or bad. It is whether a company’s revenues are tied to measurable benefits on Earth — or to externalities that regulation has not yet fully priced.
So perhaps the dark side of the Moon is not a lunar metaphor at all. It is the risk that public markets fall in love with the romance of space before they do the harder ESG accounting. Artemis makes the theme feel heroic again. But for equity markets, the more interesting question is less “can we go?” than “what are we bringing back — value, damage, or both?”