Not Urgent, Not Important: Mission Authorization for Space Activities

This series, Space in Focus, explores key space trends, challenges, and policy issues that will confront the next administration as well as offers recommendations for how to navigate them.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed that he had, “. . . two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” It has been almost nine years since the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recommended establishing a new authorization and supervision framework for novel space activities, later coined mission authorization. It has been nearly one year since the National Space Council released its mission authorization proposal, which followed the introduction of congressional legislation on the same topic in November 2023. In total, three successive administrations, representing both sides of the political aisle, have been devised but are unable to implement solutions for mission authorization.

Arguably, the evidence suggests there has been little sign of urgency to establish this new process. Perhaps that’s an unintentional acknowledgment that doing so would not likely contribute meaningfully to the continued success and safety of U.S. commercial space endeavors. Rather than focusing on mission authorization, to better position the U.S. space sector to help counter China’s growing space power, contribute to space security, and maintain U.S. space leadership, policymaking attention over the next four years should focus on mission acceleration. That means optimizing, refining, modernizing, and streamlining existing space regulatory processes, rather than creating new regulations or frameworks.

In 2015, Congress directed OSTP to assess current and future private-sector space activities and, using existing authorities, propose an authorization and supervision approach for these activities that would prioritize space safety, promote industry, minimize regulatory burdens, and ensure the United States met its Outer Space Treaty (OST) obligations. Concluding that many proposed private-sector space activities were not addressed by existing licensing schemes, the report recommended the creation of a new oversight framework, referred to as mission authorization.

But over eight years after OSTP first proposed a new framework in 2016, policymakers have yet to find consensus on a way forward. Have there been consequences to this delay? To a large degree, the casus belli—concerns about OST compliance—might have been overstated, as the United States has received no specific international criticism on this issue, doing no more or no less than most other OST signatories with respect to its Article VI responsibilities. Moreover, existing U.S. licensing processes cover space launch and reentry, spectrum use, and remote sensing, which together provide robust oversight of U.S. private sector space activities.

Some experts have stated that the lack of a mission authorization framework creates regulatory uncertainty that is hampering the growth of the U.S. space sector. But for the last decade, U.S. space companies have continued to reach new heights, measured by both technological feats and interest from private investors. Just in the past year, Intuitive Machines made the first successful commercial lunar landing, Varda Space returned its orbital drug processing capsule, and SpaceX conducted multiple Starship test launches and its groundbreaking Polaris Dawn mission, among other achievements from dozens of companies. In 2023, U.S. space companies landed a near-record $12.5 billion in private investment, up 30 percent since 2022.

If anything is holding back U.S. space companies, it’s not a lack of government oversight, but rather bureaucratic bottlenecks and delays resulting from existing U.S. regulatory processes. The return of Varda’s capsule was delayed for months as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Air Force, which operated the remote Utah range in which Varda intended to land, withheld permission for its reentry. Additionally, SpaceX has faced repeated FAA licensing delays for its Starship test flights and a hefty FAA fine which arguably resulted from bureaucratic delays in approving minor changes to Falcon 9 procedures and facilities.

Before considering new regulatory frameworks for commercial space activities, it’s worth optimizing existing processes so they keep pace with commercial space advancements. This is worth doing not only to support U.S. businesses and grow the space economy but also because it furthers national space goals, as both NASA and the military depend on commercial space for mission success. Due to the rapid growth in China’s national security, civil, and commercial space capabilities, the United States should prioritize unleashing its commercial space sector to accelerate innovation and ensure the United States remains the world’s preeminent space power. At a minimum, this means tackling two main things: adequately resourcing existing space regulators and providing standardized methods for regulatory compliance while retaining flexibilities for expeditiously licensing new and emerging technologies.

Given the pace of space activities, specifically commercial launches, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) needs more money and people to efficiently do its mission. Fortunately, Congress has already been steadily increasing funding for AST over the past few years. It should base further increases on estimates from AST on the resources it actually needs to do the job, independent of the official budget request. To increase AST funding, Congress could consider giving AST authority to charge some type of user fees, creating something like FAA’s Airport and Airway Trust Fund for space, so that the burden of scaling AST functions is paid for by users of its services and not just the general taxpayer. Congress may also want to consider providing AST flexible hiring authorities so that it can recruit top talent, such as individuals with range and launch safety experience in industry.

To streamline and accelerate the regulatory timelines, AST should accelerate efforts to improve the licensing process. In 2020, the FAA consolidated a number of launch and return regulations into one new rule—called Part 450—that replaced prescriptive safety requirements with performance-based criteria. The aim was to create a flexible approach that accommodated emerging new technologies, which at that time included reusable launch systems. Instead of accelerating timelines, the new approach has meant companies spend a lot of time getting regulators on board with their plans to comply with safety requirements.

For new technologies or complex applications, AST should continue to lean on its compliance-based approach. But it should also expand the use of FAA’s Advisory Circularprocess to provide one or more clear-cut methods of regulatory compliance for as many launch and reentry scenarios as possible. Granted, developing advisory circulars takes AST staff away from the task of adjudicating license applications, but doing so actually will save time and effort over the long run, making many licensing much simpler for regulators to process and possibly creating opportunities for some process automation. Generating more advisory circulars on streamlined compliance criteria, which should be continuously improved based on mission feedback, would create a virtuous flywheel effect, allowing AST to handle an ever-increasing number of applications and license modifications with only modest resource increases over time.

It’s worth acknowledging that some launch delays, specifically those associated with Starship, can be attributed to environmental rules that are outside the remit of the FAA and unrelated to safety regulations. The only way to tackle those issues would be to reform and modernize regulations enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act provisions, which is something most recently done to accelerate permitting and project reviews for clean energy initiatives.

But all is not regulatory doom and gloom for U.S. space companies. In 2020, regulators updated and streamlined licensing rules for U.S. remote sensing companies. In October 2024, the Department of Commerce announced that it was easing export control rules on the sale by U.S. companies of space-related technologies and services to allies and partners. In both cases, the goal was to help level the playing field for U.S. companies competing for space-related business with foreign companies. Though moves in the right direction, these two reforms are only the first step of broader revisions, as U.S. space companies will struggle to lead globally with rules that put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their international competitors.

If ultimately U.S. policymakers look again at mission authorization, they should consider whether current licensing processes are sufficient and, if not, whether those processes could be changed, without the need for new authorities, to do the job. As noted earlier, the United States already regulates private-sector space activities. Arguably, the Department of Defense—soon the Department of Commerce—provides supervision of U.S. private sector space activities by monitoring the space environment and providing collision warnings to spacecraft operators. If there is truly a need, perhaps these existing processes could be tweaked to remove all doubts about U.S. compliance with its treaty obligations without the need for a new process.

Though well-intentioned, the quest to establish a new mission authorization framework is ultimately, at this point, not urgently needed. Today, bureaucratic bottlenecks and regulatory delays risk holding up the growth of the U.S. space sector. To quote an industry official from a congressional hearing in September 2024, “. . . there are very few things in my 20 years in the space industry that have gotten everybody on the same page, and one of them is export controls . . . and the other is the challenges . . . with [Part] 450 right now.” Rather than adding more rules and processes, the U.S. government should work to modernize, optimize, and streamline what is already on the books. Recent efforts to modernize space export rules are a good start. There is more work to be done in the next four years.

Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.