Does the Space Commerce Certification Create or Reduce Red Tape?

In July 2026, the Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC) announced that it would soon begin seeking applications for its voluntary mission authorization process. This process has two aims: streamline existing regulatory mechanisms and ensure all U.S. private sector space activities are subject to government review. As part of the review, government agencies would be allowed to raise concerns about proposed space activities—but the specific desired outcomes or evaluation criteria for reviewing applications is not clear. Because of this ambiguity, such a process may inject risk, uncertainty, and unpredictability into the U.S. space economy.

Despite these issues, the administration is right to focus attention on the need to develop some new space regulations, such as rules addressing space safety and third-party liability issues. Rather than pursuing a broad and voluntary mission authorization mandate, however, the administration should narrowly define the regulatory outcomes it wishes to achieve and work with Congress on granting authorities to a federal agency for promulgating those regulations.

The concept of mission authorization is based on the premise that on-orbit private sector space activities, such as in-space manufacturing and lunar mining—which are currently not evaluated as part of licensing processes—should be subject to regulations. According to its proponents, mission authorization is needed to ensure the United States meets its obligations under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty (OST), which specifies that signatories must authorize and provide continuing supervision of their nongovernment space activities. Although this sounds like a straightforward issue, the nature of the OST makes this challenging. Unlike the treaty establishing the International Maritime Organization, which requires signatories to enact specific national regulations, or the expectation that International Civil Aviation Organization members adopt certain standards, the OST neither provides a compliance blueprint nor defines “authorization and continuing supervision.” The U.S. government could simply say it already complies with Article VI through existing regulations—and there is nothing in the treaty to prove that wrong. While the United States should hold high standards for itself, overly strict interpretations of international agreements can harm U.S. interests.

The new OSC Space Commerce Certification framework, as well as an August 2025 executive order that called for the process, explicitly references Article VI of the OST and a need to authorize space activities not currently subject to U.S. regulations. This framework would create an interagency review to assess applications for “concerns relating to national security, foreign policy or international obligations, and safety of operations.” The process would be voluntary, because the OSC does not have the statutory authority for implementing this type of regulation. If no interagency partner expresses concerns within 120 days, the applicant would be granted a certification—but this clock applies to submitting rather than resolving issues. The framework is light on many key details, such as review criteria, which agencies would participate in the review process, the level of transparency afforded to applicants during or after the review, and what happens when an agency participating in the review process expresses concerns about a proposed activity. Additionally, because space companies regularly come up with new products and space activities, this framework may require companies to repeatedly return for updated approvals.

OSC makes clear that the certification would not replace requirements from agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which already regulate activities involving or taking place in space. However, the OSC has indicated it will try to convince other regulators to waive some of their requirements for entities possessing the certification. That the FCC or FAA, for example, would accept the certification in lieu of their own reviews for certain requirements implies an equivalency or duplication in what, presumably, these agencies are already regulating. The risk in either case is that a process intended to simplify and streamline ends up adding confusion and complications to space licensing mechanisms.

The certification process would also allow agencies to express concerns about proposed activities for a list of other reasons—national security, foreign policy, international obligations, and safety. This is a broad remit and risks creating an opaque interagency process that is incentivized to reduce the government’s risk rather than allow a company to proceed with a novel activity that may produce unforeseen consequences. The prevailing view of the space industry is that the government would be a light-touch authorizer, inclined to quickly authorize novel space activities. But this may be a bad assumption. Industry has often criticized other interagency decisionmaking processes, despite continuous policymaking efforts to reform them, noting that licensing of cutting-edge commercial Earth observation satellites is too slow, International Traffic in Arms Regulations and export control approvals are too restrictive, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States determinations are inefficient and inconsistent, and interagency spectrum coordination processes lack transparency. Rather than resolve, a new interagency process with a broad remit may create new uncertainty for space companies.

Despite the risks of giving the government a wide-ranging regulatory mandate over space activities, there are good reasons for some new regulations targeted to achieve specific outcomes. For example, there are undoubtedly safety risks associated with commercial human spaceflight that should be assessed and mitigated using regulations. However, U.S. law currently prohibits such rules until 2028. There are also liability issues that come from activities in space involving close-proximity and docking operations between commercial spacecraft. Such risks to third parties could be addressed through mandatory on-orbit insurance requirements, something already on the books as part of space licensing regimes in other countries. Finally, there are reasons to regulate private sector space activities intended to operate on other planets because those activities could lead to contamination. Contaminating Mars, for example, with microbes from Earth could spoil opportunities for groundbreaking discoveries, such as finding evidence that life developed there.

Finally, if the administration wants to create new regulations for space activities—focused on space safety or other outcomes—it ultimately needs to work with Congress. Without congressional action, there can be no durable and comprehensive solution. To move beyond a voluntary framework, Congress will have to grant a federal agency new authorities. To streamline existing processes, Congress will have to restructure already-granted statutory authorities. Those authorities should be laser-focused on the specific reasons to regulate—such as to reduce risk to human life or manage moral hazard, for example—and need to be spelled out as clearly as possible. The OSC could turn to an expert advisory committee like the one envisioned in a bill passed by the Senate in August 2026 for advice in scoping regulations. Inadequately scoping desired regulatory outcomes or giving too much latitude to the interagency to throw down a red card, a theme common in past mission authorization proposals too, risk producing aimless and burdensome rules. A lesson from other interagency frameworks is that they are risk averse and tend to generate uncertainty for companies rather than reduce it. Although well intentioned, the mission certification process may end up doing the same thing for the U.S. space economy, with space companies and their investors facing the regulatory equivalent of the sword of Damocles looming overhead.

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