Earth’s horizon captured from the International Space Station above Western Australia on the coast of Shark Bay. Photo: NASA

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— Government officials and regulatory experts say that moving more quickly on space law, regulations, and policy while keeping tech innovation moving forward unencumbered is a key priority. A group of experts from industry, the FCC, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spoke Monday at Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

The discussion revolved around Article Six of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, the legal foundation for international space activities, and its provisions about international responsibility for national activities in space, and that those activities require authorization and continuing supervision by those governments. 

A patchwork of regulations has been created over the years based on that legal foundation. Today, there is a growing overlap of regulations in the U.S. from multiple agencies that creates a complicated landscape for industry.

Caryn Schenewerk, the president of CS Consulting, who has a background working on space policy with the White House, said she “certainly has these scars of big space policy and budget fights as well as licensing fights.”

The stress around Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensing of launch and reentries has significantly increased, she said, as a result of the increased use of commercial licensing approaches for commercial activities, but also for civil and U.S. Department of Defense activities. “I say stress not because it’s bad, but because it has pulled even more business into the office of Commercial Space Transportation, which is within the FAA, within the Department of Transportation. That office governs space ports, launch, reentry and payload reviews. The office does not have, per congressional direction, oversight of activities that are happening in orbit,” she said. 

There are working groups addressing the problem of complying with various regulations, and the FCC is moving forward with a space advisory committee, she said.

Gabriel Swiney, director of Policy, Advocacy and International Division of NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce said his office is focused on rolling out TraCSS, a civil space traffic coordination system. “Our office is playing a leading role in trying to address this question of regulations for in-space activities,” Swiney said. 

He sees potentially different rules from the FAA and the FCC that are duplicated and essentially slow down processes. 

“Often, operators and launchers have to submit virtually the same information, and not identical information, through multiple systems to multiple regulators. So I think we actually have a whole series of related but different problems with the current system,” he said. 

Leading the regulatory evolution and modernization of space has to be the job of the U.S., argued Cat Kuersten, senior corporate counsel for Amazon’s Project Kuiper. The FCC is making rulemaking progress, she said.

She gave the example of the FCC’s Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) framework, which allows satellite operators to partner with wireless providers and use terrestrial spectrum to provide coverage where cellular networks do not exist. 

“This has tremendous implications, not just for underserved Americans everywhere, but also for disaster relief and emergency services,” Kuersten said. 

Krystle Caponio, chief business officer at Astroforge, which is designing and building deep space spacecraft, talked about the 2023 National Space Council meeting that discussed U.S. leadership in the global space economy. “One outcome of that was to task both the Commerce and State departments to revisit the framework of export control, such as the regulations and licensing processing. One of the rulemaking provisions was a final rule that was published by Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to remove licensing requirements for certain spacecraft for export to Australia, Canada, and U.K. and related technologies as well. The second was the BIS interim final rule which reduced export control restrictions for certain lower sensitive spacecraft componentry.

With that activity, the U.S. is going in the right direction to “strengthen our international partnerships and empower us innovators in the global space economy,” she said. She added that we need faster licensing processing. “Having faster timelines for licensing will encourage more innovation upfront, more R&D collaborations with foreign universities and research organizations.”

Jay Schwarz, chief of the FCC Space Bureau gave a keynote address. He recognized the need for change within the FCC, saying that he wants to flip the role of gatekeeper to a bias for permission. 

“Consider what happens at the micro level,” he said. “Let’s say if you’re a company, maybe a startup, who’s facing a regulator who lacks a bias for permission, you’re going to have to answer a bunch of questions. It’s going to add a lot of complications. Our licensing system is a classic gatekeeper system, and it was a system that was designed for an industry that maybe used to exist and could tolerate it. But it’s not tuned to the system or the industry that we have today.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that an FAA official spoke at the event. The FAA did not have a speaker on the program.