The short version

• Nobody can own the Moon. Article II of the Outer Space Treaty is unambiguous about the place itself.
• Four states have legislated that companies can own what they extract: the United States in 2015, Luxembourg in 2017, the UAE in 2019 and Japan in 2021.
• Seventy states have now signed the Artemis Accords, whose Section 10 records the view that extraction is not by itself national appropriation.
• The COPUOS working group on space resources is due to prepare draft principles during 2026, with adoption targeted for 2027.

The question gets asked at every space conference and it is almost always asked badly. “Who owns the Moon” has a clean answer: nobody, and nobody can. The interesting question is narrower. If a company lands a machine on the Moon and it fills a hopper with regolith, who owns the regolith?

That question is genuinely unsettled, and the way it gets settled will determine whether lunar and asteroid mining is financeable.

What Article II settles

Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

Outer Space Treaty, Article II

That rules out territory. No flag plant creates a claim, no continuous occupation ripens into title, and the closing phrase “by any other means” was drafted to catch creative attempts.

Article VI then closes the obvious loophole. States are internationally responsible for the activities of their non-governmental entities in space, so a company cannot do what its state cannot do. The idea that a private company could claim lunar territory where a state could not has no support in the text.

Everyone agrees on all of that. The disagreement starts one step later.

The consistency argument

The case that extraction is lawful runs like this.

Article II prohibits appropriation of the celestial body. Regolith removed from the surface is no longer the celestial body, in the same way that a fish taken from the high seas is no longer the high seas. Under UNCLOS Part VII no state may appropriate the ocean, and yet harvested fish are unambiguously owned. The analogy is not perfect but it is close, and it reflects a very old distinction between a commons and the resources taken from it.

Article I independently protects “use” of outer space, and extraction is a form of use. The drafters chose broad language and did not carve out resource activity.

Finally, Article II’s list of prohibited means, sovereignty, use, occupation and any other means, is aimed at sovereign claims. On this reading, Section 10 of the Artemis Accords does not change the law. It states it.

The inconsistency argument

The case against is not merely a policy objection.

Article VI attributes non-governmental activity to the licensing state. If a state authorises and continuously supervises a mining operation, and confers property rights in the output, the state is doing through a licensee what Article II forbids it to do directly.

Commercial scale extraction is not a fishing boat passing through. It requires a fixed installation, exclusive access to a site with the right illumination and volatile content, and that exclusivity has to be defensible over decades. The Accords make this explicit through the Section 11 concept of safety zones, which critics read as territorial exclusion under another name. There are only a handful of permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole with useful water ice, and the first operator to occupy one has, in practical terms, taken it.

There is also a process objection. A group of states is generating interpretive practice through a non-treaty instrument, outside COPUOS, where the consensus rule gives every state a voice. Russia and China have not signed and have objected publicly to the approach.

What the national laws actually say

The US provision, at 51 U.S.C. 51303, entitles a US citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid or space resource to possess, own, transport, use and sell what they obtain, in accordance with applicable law including US international obligations. Section 403 of the same Act adds that Congress does not thereby assert sovereignty or exclusive rights over any celestial body.

That disclaimer is doing careful work. The statute is drafted to confer a right against other US persons in US courts, not to assert a claim erga omnes.

Luxembourg’s Article 1 is the shortest and most quoted provision in the field: space resources are capable of being owned. The rest of the law is an authorisation regime, requiring prior written mission authorisation, a Luxembourg-law company or an EU company with a Luxembourg branch, and disclosure of shareholders and management.

Japan’s version is the most procedurally integrated. A permit is granted alongside a satellite launch authorisation, the applicant files a business activity plan, the Prime Minister decides in consultation with METI, and approved permits and plans are published. The person holding the permit owns the resources exploited in accordance with the approved plan.

Where the Accords have got to

The Artemis Accords opened for signature on 13 October 2020 with eight founding signatories. As at August 2026 there are 70, with Serbia signing on 16 July 2026 and Mauritius on 17 July 2026. Eleven states signed during 2026 alone.

The relevant text is Section 10, which notes that extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation under Article II, and commits signatories to conduct extraction consistently with the Outer Space Treaty and to inform the UN Secretary-General, the public and the international scientific community of their extraction activities.

The Accords are a political commitment, not a treaty. They create no new binding obligations and are not registered under Article 102 of the UN Charter. What seventy signatures do create is state practice, and state practice is one of the ingredients of customary international law. That is precisely why the number matters and why the states outside it have objected.

The multilateral track nobody talks about

The COPUOS Legal Subcommittee established a Working Group on Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities in 2021, with a five year workplan running from 2022 to 2027.

Information gathering and legal analysis ran from 2022 to 2024, including an international expert conference in Luxembourg on 26 March 2024. Views on preliminary recommendations were exchanged during 2025. Draft principles are to be prepared during 2026, with finalisation and adoption by the Committee targeted for 2027. The most recent circulated draft of the initial set of recommended principles is dated 17 December 2025.

This is the counterweight story, and it gets a fraction of the coverage the Accords do. If COPUOS produces a consensus set of principles in 2027, the Accords will look like an early expression of a broader position. If it does not, the Accords will be the only text in the field, and the divide between signatories and non-signatories becomes the governing structure by default.

What a financier should take from this

For anyone underwriting a lunar or asteroid venture, the honest position is that ownership of extracted material is well supported in the domestic law of the four legislating states and unsettled in international law.

That is not necessarily fatal. Most of the disputes that would actually arise, over offtake, over trespass on a site, over financing security, would be litigated between private parties in national courts applying national law. The international question bites at the margin: if a non-signatory state disputes the operation diplomatically, or if the operator needs recognition of its title in a jurisdiction that rejects the position.

The gap that has no answer at all is priority. There is no international registry of claimed extraction sites, no first-in-time rule, and no forum to resolve two operators wanting the same crater. Safety zones under the Accords are a notification and consultation mechanism among signatories, not a title system.

The short version

• Space Law Journal is running an interview series with the people who write, apply and argue about space law.
• We are looking for regulators, in-house counsel, private practice lawyers, insurers, academics and operators.
• Interviews run 800 to 1,500 words, are conducted by email or call, and you see the copy before it publishes.
• To take part, write to space@legaldesire.com with the subject line Interview.

Most writing about space law describes rules. Very little of it describes what happens when someone has to apply one.

That gap is what this series is for.

What we want to ask

We are less interested in a summary of the Outer Space Treaty than in the questions that only come up when you are actually doing the work.

What does an FAA means of compliance negotiation actually feel like from the applicant’s side? How does a regulator decide what counts as enough information in a debris analysis? What does an underwriter look at first on a new bus with no flight heritage? How does a national administration prioritise between two domestic applicants competing for the same ITU filing slot? What did the DISH consent decree change inside compliance teams, if anything?

Those answers are not in the rule text. They are held by a few hundred people worldwide and they get shared over coffee at conferences.

Who we would like to hear from

• Regulators and agency staff, current or former, at the FCC, FAA, Office of Space Commerce, UK CAA, EUSPA, national space agencies, IN-SPACe and elsewhere
• In-house counsel at operators, manufacturers, launch providers and ground segment companies
• Private practice lawyers in satellite regulatory, launch licensing, export control, space finance and disputes
• Insurance and finance professionals, underwriters, brokers and satellite finance specialists
• Academics working on space resources, debris governance, military uses and the delimitation question
• Operators and engineers who deal with the regulatory interface directly

We are particularly interested in hearing from outside the usual Washington and Brussels axis. The Indian, Japanese, Australian, New Zealand, Emirati and African regimes are under-covered relative to how much is happening in them.

How it works

Format. Between six and ten questions, answered by email or over a call that we transcribe. Published length is typically 800 to 1,500 words.

Timing. We send questions within a week of agreeing to run the interview. There is no deadline pressure on your side.

Approval. You see the full edited copy before it publishes. We will not publish a quote you have not signed off. If something you said on a call is better left out, it comes out.

Attribution. On the record by default, with your name, role and organisation. If your employer requires review, tell us at the start and we will build the timeline around it. We can run an interview on background where the subject genuinely requires it, but we prefer not to.

Editing. We edit for length and clarity, not for position. We will not sharpen your view to make better copy.

A note on what this section is not

Some publications run interviews that are effectively sponsored profiles. This is not that.

We do not charge to publish an interview, we do not accept payment for one, and we will not run a piece that reads as marketing for a product or a firm. If the honest answer to a question is that a rule is working well, we will print that. If the honest answer is that it is not, we will print that too.

Get in touch

Write to space@legaldesire.com with the subject line Interview. Tell us who you are, what you work on, and one thing about your area that you think is widely misunderstood. That last part is usually where the interesting interview is hiding.

If you would rather write than be interviewed, our submissions guidelines set out what we publish and how to pitch.

The short version

• Conjunction warnings for the world still come free from the US Space Force, which tracks roughly 60,000 objects and publishes through Space-Track.org.
• The civil replacement, TraCSS, had 70 pilot users covering more than 11,345 satellites and 10 national government accounts as at August 2026.
• Its funding has been zeroed out in two consecutive budget requests. Appropriators restored it once, at $52.5 million for FY2026. The FY2027 request is $11 million.
• None of this addresses the real gap, which is that nobody has authority to tell two operators which one must move.

This is a signed opinion piece. It argues a position.

There is a fact about space traffic management that people outside the field find difficult to believe when they first hear it. When two satellites owned by two different companies are heading for the same point in space, there is no authority anywhere that can require either of them to move.

Not the FCC. Not the FAA. Not the ITU. Not the UN. Nobody.

What happens instead is that both operators receive a warning, and then they email each other.

What actually exists

The warning comes from the US Space Force. Space Operations Command tracks roughly 60,000 space objects and distributes catalogue data and conjunction data messages free of charge through Space-Track.org. Operationally the work sits with the 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons under the Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenberg.

This is a remarkable public good. A military organisation in one country provides collision warnings to the entire world, including to operators of states it is in open competition with, at no charge, and has done so for years.

It is also an odd foundation for global infrastructure. It exists because someone decided it should, it is funded through a defence budget for defence purposes, and its continuation is a matter of US policy rather than international obligation.

Space Policy Directive-3 in June 2018 recognised the oddity and directed the Department of Commerce to take the civil space traffic safety mission from the Department of Defense. The Office of Space Commerce built the Traffic Coordination System for Space to do it.

Where TraCSS has got to

The programme has made real progress. Beta testing began in 2024 and SpaceX joined as the tenth beta user. The pilot expanded in September 2025 with solicitations for commercial conjunction assessment screening. Satellite owner and operator registrations opened in early 2026 at tracss.gov.

As at August 2026 the Office of Space Commerce reported 70 pilot users covering more than 11,345 satellites, with 10 national government accounts onboarded. Its director described the system in July 2026 as in a pilot phase but essentially operational.

The handover from the Space Force, originally scheduled for 2026, has not completed.

The funding fight

Here is the part that should worry anyone who cares about orbital safety.

The FY2026 budget request zeroed out TraCSS, a programme costing roughly $55 million a year, as part of an approximately 83 percent cut to the Office of Space Commerce. Seven trade associations representing around 450 space companies petitioned Congress to reverse it. Appropriators did, at an enacted level of $52.5 million for the Office of Space Commerce.

The same fight has repeated for FY2027, with a request of $11 million, roughly an 80 percent cut from the FY2026 enacted level. As at 24 August 2026 there is no confirmed final congressional action.

Consider what that means. The industry’s own trade associations, representing hundreds of companies with tens of billions of dollars of assets in orbit, had to lobby to keep a $55 million safety programme alive. Twice.

My actual complaint

I want to be careful here, because the TraCSS funding story is the one everyone tells and it is not the most important one.

Even a fully funded, fully operational TraCSS is a data service. It screens conjunctions and tells operators about them. It does not decide who moves.

That is the gap. And it is not a technical gap, it is a legal one.

The Liability Convention supplies a fault standard for in-orbit damage and never defines fault, as we set out in our piece on debris liability. There are no rules of the road. No right of way. No obligation to maintain manoeuvring capability. No defined probability of collision at which action becomes mandatory. No duty to answer another operator’s message.

So when two operators receive the same conjunction data message, what governs is goodwill, engineering judgement, and whether their operations teams happen to have each other’s phone numbers.

Most of the time that works, because most operators are professional and nobody wants to lose a satellite. The Space Data Association exists precisely to pool ephemeris data and make operator to operator coordination easier, and it does useful work.

But “most of the time it works because everyone is being sensible” is not a regulatory system. It is the absence of one. It fails in exactly the cases that matter: when one object is dead and cannot move, when an operator is unresponsive, when two operators disagree about whose data is right, and when the parties are from states that do not talk to each other.

What a referee would need

I do not think this is unsolvable, and I do not think it requires a new treaty, which would take twenty years and probably fail.

Three things would do most of the work, and all three can be done through national licensing, which is where the leverage already sits.

A duty to be reachable. Licence conditions requiring a 24 hour operational contact, a maximum response time to a conjunction notification, and published ephemeris of stated accuracy. Trivial to impose. Almost costless to comply with.

A default manoeuvre rule. Something as simple as: where both objects are manoeuvrable and the operators have not agreed otherwise within a defined window, the object in the lower orbit manoeuvres. The specific rule matters much less than having one, because the current default is that nobody is obliged to do anything.

A duty to retain capability. A requirement to maintain propellant sufficient for collision avoidance through end of mission, separate from the disposal reserve. The FCC’s willingness to enforce a disposal commitment against DISH in 2023 shows the enforcement route already exists. We discuss that case here.

None of that requires a global authority. It requires the three or four regulators that license most of the world’s satellites to impose similar conditions, which is how debris mitigation norms spread in the first place.

Why it has not happened

Partly because it is nobody’s job. The FCC regulates communications and reaches orbital safety through the licensing back door. The FAA regulates the flight, not the orbit. Commerce has the mission and has spent two years defending its budget.

Partly because the industry’s incentives are split. Large constellation operators have the best conjunction data, the most manoeuvrable satellites and the most sophisticated automation. A default rule would constrain them more than it would help them, and they can manage bilaterally with anyone who matters.

And partly because nothing has gone catastrophically wrong yet. The 2009 Iridium and Cosmos collision was the last event that made this a headline, and it produced guidelines rather than rules.

The uncomfortable truth is that this is a regime that will probably be fixed after an accident rather than before one. I would rather be wrong about that.

The short version

• Most space law jobs are not public international law jobs. They are regulatory, contracts and export control jobs with space as the subject matter.
• The four routes that actually hire: satellite and telecoms regulatory, aviation regulatory, government contracts, and export control.
• A specialist LLM helps with credibility and network. It does not substitute for regulatory experience.
• The sector is small enough that the people who do this know each other, which makes writing and showing up unusually effective.

The honest starting point for anyone thinking about space law as a career is that the field people imagine and the field that exists are different.

The imagined version involves treaty interpretation, arguments about lunar sovereignty and appearances before international bodies. That work exists. There are perhaps a few dozen people in the world who do it as the majority of their practice, most of them academics or government legal advisers.

The version that hires is regulatory and commercial. Getting a client through an FAA launch licence, an FCC space station application or an ITU filing. Negotiating a launch services agreement. Working out whether a component is on the US Munitions List. Advising on whether a constellation will fall inside the EU Space Act. That work has grown a great deal in the last decade and is still growing.

If the second version sounds less interesting than the first, that is worth knowing before you invest in an LLM.

The four doors in

Satellite and telecoms regulatory

The most direct route. Firms with established satellite regulatory practices, mostly in Washington DC, London and Brussels, handle FCC space and earth station licensing, market access, ITU coordination through national administrations, and now the transition from FCC Part 25 to the new Part 100 adopted in July 2026.

What you need: telecoms regulatory experience, comfort with technical filings, patience for procedural detail. A background in communications law transfers almost completely.

Aviation and transport regulatory

Launch licensing is administratively closer to aviation than to anything else. The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation sits inside the FAA, uses FAA rulemaking machinery, and Part 450 reads like an aviation safety rule because it is one. The UK route is the same, with the Civil Aviation Authority as the space regulator under the Space Industry Act 2018.

What you need: aviation regulatory experience, or a willingness to learn safety case analysis and risk thresholds. We set out how Part 450 works here.

Government contracts

A large share of the money in the sector is government money. NASA, ESA, national defence procurement, and the contracts underneath them. Firms with strong government contracts practices ended up with strong space practices almost by accident.

What you need: procurement law, cost accounting standards, bid protest experience.

Export control

Spacecraft and their components sit on the US Munitions List under ITAR Category XV or on the Commerce Control List in the 9×515 series. Every hardware transaction, every foreign employee, every technical exchange runs through this analysis. It is unglamorous and consistently in demand.

What you need: ITAR and EAR experience. It is one of the few areas where junior lawyers get real responsibility quickly, because the volume is high.

Where the jobs sit

On the specialist LLM question

The established programmes are McGill’s Institute of Air and Space Law, Leiden’s International Institute of Air and Space Law, the University of Mississippi’s Center for Air and Space Law, and a growing number of newer offerings.

What they give you is real: a working knowledge of the treaty framework, the vocabulary to hold a conversation with people already in the field, a supervised piece of writing you can point to, and a network that is genuinely useful because the field is small.

What they do not give you is a licensing practice. Nobody hires a lawyer to file an FCC application because they wrote a thesis on Article II. Firms hire regulatory experience and then teach the space part.

The most reliable pattern we see is people who build a transferable regulatory skill first and add the space specialism, rather than the other way round. If you are choosing between an LLM and two years in a telecoms regulatory team, take the two years.

If you are already in practice and want the LLM for credibility and network, that calculation is different and often worth it.

What actually differentiates candidates

Three things, in order.

Technical literacy. Not an engineering degree. The ability to read a mission profile, understand what an orbit regime implies, follow a debris analysis without needing every term explained, and ask an engineer a sensible question. This is the single most commented-on difference between lawyers who thrive in the sector and lawyers who do not.

Regulatory stamina. The work involves long documents, iterative agency engagement and long timelines. A Part 450 application for a novel vehicle can take well over a year from first engagement. People who need fast closure are unhappy here.

Visible output. The field is small enough that writing gets read. A well argued case note on a decision that has just landed, or a clear explainer on a rule change, will be read by a meaningful percentage of the people who work in this area. That is not true in most practice areas and it is a genuine advantage for anyone starting out.

A practical first year

If you are starting from zero and want to be credible in twelve months, this is what we would suggest.

Read the Outer Space Treaty, then the Liability Convention, then the Registration Convention. Total reading time under two hours. Our article by article walk through covers what matters.

Read 14 CFR Part 450 and 47 CFR Part 25. Not to memorise them, but to understand the shape of a licensing regime and the distance between the treaty layer and the working layer.

Follow the live files. As at August 2026 those are the FCC’s Part 100 transition, the FAA’s environmental waiver proposal, the EU Space Act trilogue, and the COPUOS space resources principles due in 2026 and 2027. Being current on four live files makes you more useful in a conversation than knowing the treaties well.

Write something. A case note on the DISH consent decree or the Dark-Sky decision, an explainer on the five year deorbit rule, an analysis of what the EU Space Act would mean for a non-EU operator. Then send it to people. This works far better than it should.

Go where the people are. The International Astronautical Congress, the International Institute of Space Law’s events, the Manfred Lachs Moot if you are still a student, and the national space agency and regulator briefings which are usually open and usually under-attended by lawyers.

A note on where you are

The sector is concentrated but less than it was. Washington DC remains the centre of gravity for launch and satellite regulatory work. London has become the largest single source of space insurance capacity and the UK CAA is now an active launch regulator. Luxembourg built a space resources practice around its 2017 law. Bengaluru and Delhi are growing quickly since the Indian Space Policy 2023 made IN-SPACe the single window authorising body and FDI rules were liberalised in 2024. Tokyo, Sydney, Wellington and Abu Dhabi all have working regimes and therefore working practices.

If you are not in one of those places, the writing route matters more, and it works.

The short version

• The EU Space Act is a proposed regulation, COM(2025) 335 final, published 25 June 2025. It is not law yet.
• 120 articles across three pillars: safety, resilience and sustainability.
• It reaches non-EU operators. Obligations attach to anyone providing space based data or services in the Union, wherever they are established.
• The Council and Parliament are still negotiating. Application dates have already slipped from the Commission’s proposed 1 January 2030.

Europe currently regulates space activity through thirteen different national regimes. A satellite operator established in Luxembourg, launching from French Guiana, with a ground station in Spain and customers in Germany, deals with several authorisation frameworks that were written independently and do not align.

The EU Space Act is the Commission’s attempt to replace that with one instrument. It is ambitious, it is contested, and as at August 2026 it is still a proposal.

What was proposed

The full title is the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the safety, resilience and sustainability of space activities in the Union. It was published on 25 June 2025 as COM(2025) 335 final, under procedure 2025/0335(COD), with Article 114 TFEU as its legal basis. That choice of legal basis is deliberate: this is framed as an internal market measure, not a space policy one.

The text runs to 120 articles across seven titles.

Pillar one: safety

Tracking of space objects, debris mitigation, collision avoidance and end-of-life disposal, supported by a Union Register of Space Objects. This is the pillar that most resembles what the FCC and the FAA already do, and where operators with US authorisations will find the least new ground.

Pillar two: resilience

Cybersecurity risk management obligations across the full mission lifecycle, from design through to disposal. This pillar is more detailed than NIS2 and was originally drafted as lex specialis to it, which raised an obvious question about which instrument governs an operator caught by both.

Pillar three: sustainability

Environmental footprint declarations, a space specific life cycle assessment methodology, sustainability performance classification, and design requirements for debris limitation and in-space servicing. Minisatellites are carved out of some of the servicing design requirements.

The extraterritorial reach

This is the provision non-European operators need to read.

Article 2 brings in Union space operators providing services in the Union, third country space operators providing space based data or space services in the Union, international organisations operating space assets, primary providers of space based data, and advanced space service providers such as collision avoidance and in-space operations providers.

The connecting factor is service provision, not establishment. Obligations attach irrespective of where the operator is established, if the data or services are provided in the Union. Safety and collision avoidance rules extend to objects at or below geostationary orbit that generate data or enable services in the Union.

If the final text keeps that structure, a US or Indian constellation selling into Europe takes on European compliance obligations regardless of where its licence sits.

Penalties

Member State fines have to be effective, proportionate and dissuasive, with no stated ceiling in the proposal. Separately the Commission may impose fines of up to twice the profits gained, twice the losses avoided, or 2 percent of worldwide annual turnover, plus daily penalty payments for up to six months.

The 2 percent of global turnover figure is the one that has focused minds. It is GDPR-shaped, and it is being applied to an industry with a much smaller compliance function.

Where the file has got to

The lead committee is ITRE, with Elena Donazzan of the ECR group as rapporteur.

The rapporteur’s draft report was published on 3 March 2026. Its direction is simplification: cutting the maximum authorisation timeline from twelve months to six, and introducing mutual recognition of national authorisations so an operator authorised in one Member State is not re-examined in another.

ENVI and IMCO adopted opinions in May 2026. ENVI pushes for mandatory environmental impact assessment and lifecycle responsibility. IMCO proposes a “space check” of EU legislation and foreign investment oversight.

On the Council side, the Cypriot Presidency circulated a compromise text on 30 March 2026, with all Member States maintaining scrutiny reservations. A progress report on 8 May 2026, ahead of the Competitiveness Council on 29 May, described the text as moving in the right direction and reducing complexity, while listing open issues: regulatory scope and dual use exemptions, governance architecture, avoiding a duplicative Union layer over national procedures, and the equivalence regime for third country operators.

That last one is the sleeper issue for non-EU operators. Council changes so far would keep a registration and e-certificate requirement for third country operators while exempting them from direct Space Act obligations where an equivalence finding applies. Whether that survives is the single most commercially significant open question in the file.

Other Council changes worth tracking

• International organisations removed from direct obligations, with applicability made contingent on an EU to IO agreement
• Collision avoidance service providers excluded from scope
• The NIS2 relationship changed from lex specialis to parallel application, with large operators staying under NIS2 and smaller and third country operators under the Space Act

When would it apply

The Commission proposed 1 January 2030, with 1 January 2032 for certain asset categories. The Council position is 36 months after entry into force, with a transitional period of eight years for specific categories. The Parliament rapporteur is aligned with the Council on timing.

Translated: nobody should be planning compliance spend for 2030. A realistic first application date is later, and the transitional arrangements for existing constellations will matter more than the headline date.

One correction worth making

A number of secondary sources have described COM(2026) 152 of 7 April 2026 as an amended Space Act proposal. It is not. That document is the Proposal for a Regulation on the European Union Space Services Agency, procedure 2026/0084(COD), which gives EUSPA a standalone founding regulation, renames it, and raises its budget from €525.7 million for 2021 to 2027 to €979.6 million for 2028 to 2034. It is a separate instrument.

There is no amended Commission proposal for the Space Act. The text is being changed through Council compromise texts and Parliament committee amendments, which is why tracking it requires reading committee documents rather than waiting for a new COM number.

The short version

• The cross waiver is the defining feature of a launch services agreement. Everyone bears their own losses regardless of fault, and the waiver flows down the entire contract chain.
• US law requires it. 51 U.S.C. 50914 and 14 CFR 440.17 make reciprocal waivers a condition of a licence.
• Above the waiver sit three tiers: mandatory insurance sized to maximum probable loss, government indemnification up to $1.5 billion indexed from 1989, and then the operator again, uncapped.
• The indemnification tier has never been triggered and Congress has never appropriated against it. Its current expiry is 30 September 2028.

A launch failure is the rare commercial event that can generate claims in every direction at once. The launch provider’s vehicle destroyed the customer’s satellite. The satellite’s failure damaged the pad. A component supplier three tiers down may have caused all of it. Government range equipment was involved. Several insurers are subrogated to several of those claims.

Litigated conventionally, one failure produces a decade of circular claims in which every participant sues every other participant and most of the money goes to lawyers.

The industry solved this in the 1980s and has not changed the solution since.

What a cross waiver does

A cross waiver is a reciprocal, no-fault waiver of claims. Each participant in a launch agrees to bear its own property damage and its own employees’ injuries, and waives claims against every other participant, regardless of fault.

The participants are drawn widely: the launch provider, the customer, their contractors and subcontractors at every tier, crew and spaceflight participants, and the US government. Each party must flow the waiver down its own contract chain, so a fourth tier supplier is inside the ring even though it has no contract with the launch provider.

The effect is to convert an interlocking commercial and governmental supply chain into a set of self-insured silos. Each party insures its own property, prices that into its contract, and stops worrying about who was at fault.

Two standard exceptions survive. Wilful misconduct, and claims exceeding the required insurance amounts.

The cross waiver does not touch third party claims by uninvolved people on the ground. Those are handled by the insurance and indemnification tiers below.

Where the requirement comes from

This is not purely a matter of negotiation. US law mandates it.

51 U.S.C. 50914(b) requires a launch or reentry licence to contain reciprocal waivers among the licensee, its contractors, subcontractors, customers and spaceflight participants, each assuming responsibility for its own employees’ injuries and property losses. It also requires the Secretary of Transportation to negotiate reciprocal waivers protecting the government, its agencies and its contractors, except for claims exceeding the required insurance.

14 CFR 440.17 supplies the detail. Waivers are required between the licensee and its contractors and subcontractors and the first tier customer and its contractors and subcontractors, with spaceflight participants, and with crew.

An operator that wanted to negotiate this away could not. It is a licence condition.

The three tiers above the waiver

Third parties, meaning people who are not participants in the launch, are not covered by the cross waiver. For them there is a structure.

Tier one: mandatory insurance sized to maximum probable loss

Under 51 U.S.C. 50914(a) a licensee must obtain liability insurance or demonstrate financial responsibility to cover maximum probable loss from third party claims and from claims for damage to US government property.

MPL is defined at 14 CFR 440.7 as the greatest dollar amount of loss for bodily injury or property damage reasonably expected from the licensed activity. The FAA issues a determination within 90 days of a complete request.

The probability thresholds are the technical heart of the regime. One in ten million for third parties. One in one hundred thousand for government personnel and property. Losses less probable than those thresholds are excluded from the calculation.

Statutory caps sit above the calculation: $500 million for third party liability insurance and $100 million for government property, or the maximum available on the world market at reasonable cost if that is lower.

Duration matters too. Launch cover runs until 30 days after payload separation, and reentry cover for 30 days from initiation of reentry. Certificates of insurance are due at least 30 days before activities begin.

Tier two: government indemnification

Under 51 U.S.C. 50915 the government may pay successful third party claims above the required insurance, up to $1.5 billion plus amounts reflecting inflation after 1 January 1989.

The qualifier is decisive. Payment is available only to the extent provided in advance in an appropriation law or to the extent additional legislative authority is enacted. Congress has never appropriated against it and it has never been triggered.

Tier two is therefore a promise to consider paying, not a guarantee of payment. Anyone modelling it as a hard backstop is modelling something that does not exist.

Tier three: the operator, uncapped

Claims above the indemnification ceiling fall back on the licensee, with no cap. In practice a loss of that size would be an insolvency event.

The expiry date to diarise

Under 51 U.S.C. 50915(f), the indemnification regime applies to a licence issued or transferred for which the Secretary receives a complete and valid application not later than 30 September 2028. That date was set by Pub. L. 118-159 on 23 December 2024, extending it from 30 September 2025.

Note the trigger precisely, because secondary commentary garbles it regularly. It is the date the FAA receives a complete and valid application, not the date of the launch. A licence applied for before the deadline carries the regime with it.

Given the history of short serial extensions, plan on it being extended again and do not build a business case on the assumption.

Drafting points that matter

Flow down is the weak link

The cross waiver only works if every participant is inside it. The commonest failure is a subcontract deep in the chain that omits the flow down, usually because it was papered on a supplier’s standard terms for a component that nobody thought of as launch related. Audit the chain, do not assume it.

Define the participants by reference, not by list

Personnel and suppliers change between signature and launch. A defined class that captures contractors and subcontractors at every tier is more robust than a schedule of named entities.

Wilful misconduct is narrower than it sounds

The exception is not gross negligence and it is not recklessness in the loose sense. Parties who assume it gives them a route back into the ring after a failure are usually disappointed.

Insurance and the waiver must line up

If the cross waiver allocates a loss to a party whose policy does not cover that loss, the waiver has created an uninsured exposure. This is a coordination problem between the contract team and the insurance broker and it is where most real risk sits. We look at the market side in our piece on space insurance.

Non-US launches follow a similar shape

European launch contracts through Arianespace, and licences under the UK Space Industry Act 2018 or India’s IN-SPACe regime, use comparable no-fault allocation and insurance requirements, though the numbers and the indemnity limits differ. The UK, for example, works to a standard €60 million insurance requirement and indemnity limit for typical orbital operations, and the Space Industry (Indemnities) Act 2025, in force from 18 February 2026, now makes a liability cap mandatory in every operator licence rather than discretionary.

The short version

• The launch and in-orbit insurance market is small. Premium income was over $650 million in 2025 against claims of around $503 million.
• 2023 broke it. $1.43 billion of claims against roughly $550 million of premium, which turned the rolling five year margin negative for the first time since 2001.
• Capacity of about $160 million left the market in 2024 and rates have stayed elevated since.
• Twenty five insurers were writing space risk in 2026, with the UK accounting for roughly 43 percent of launch capacity.

Space insurance is one of the smallest specialty lines in the world and one of the most consequential. It sets the floor under launch contracts, it decides whether a satellite programme is financeable, and it is priced by a few dozen underwriters who all know each other.

It is also, on the numbers, a business that has struggled to make money.

The size of the pool

Aon’s Space Insurance Market Report is the standard reference, and its Q1 2026 edition gives the shape of the market. All figures are in US dollars and claims are measured by year of occurrence, so they get revised as settlements complete.

Two things stand out. The whole global launch and in-orbit premium pool is smaller than the annual revenue of a mid-sized regional insurer. And a single bad year can wipe out several good ones.

Note also the definitional trap. Market research reports circulating in 2026 quote a “space insurance market” of around $4.43 billion growing to $6.23 billion by 2030. Those figures use a much broader definition of the sector and are not comparable to the Aon numbers. For launch and in-orbit premium specifically, the $550 to $650 million range is the one to cite. Do not blend the two.

What 2023 did

2023 is the pivot year that explains current pricing. Claims of $1.43 billion against premium of approximately $550 million produced a gross margin of minus $882 million. That single year took the rolling five year gross margin negative for the first time since 2001, to minus $643 million.

The response was capacity withdrawal. Roughly $160 million of launch and in-orbit capacity left the market during 2024.

Recovery since has been real but thin. Profitable 2024 and 2025 restored the rolling five year margin to plus $62 million at the start of 2026, which is barely above break-even across the cycle. That is the context for every renewal conversation an operator is having.

2025 in detail

Premium growth in 2025 came from several high value insured geostationary launches, launch vehicle flight-only covers and steady in-orbit renewals.

The claims side, at roughly $503 million against premium above $650 million, gave a loss ratio of 77.4 percent. That is a profitable year in a line with high volatility, but not a comfortable one.

The individual losses tell you what the market actually pays for: two small Chinese launch failures, approximately $30 million each for Astranis UtilitySat, which suffered a propulsion failure in transfer orbit after a December 2024 launch, and MethaneSAT, which suffered a power failure, and the potential total loss of SPAINSAT NG-II after it was struck by a space particle en route to its final orbital position following an October 2025 launch.

That last one is worth pausing on. A single high value geostationary spacecraft lost to an in-orbit event absorbed the year’s premium growth. In a pool this size, the loss distribution is dominated by a handful of large risks.

Who writes it

Twenty five insurers were underwriting space risks in 2026, the same number as 2025 but with real churn beneath the headline.

Phemis Underwriters, formed from the former Hiscox space team, began writing in mid-2025 with $25 million of capacity. Aesir Space, from the former Volante team, resumed in 2025 with $8.5 million. Hive Underwriting was new for 2026 with $25.5 million. Occam paused in November 2025 and resumed in February 2026 with replacement capacity from Nexus Underwriting and a reduced $18 million line.

Theoretical capacity for 2026 was $709.4 million for launch and $669.4 million for in-orbit, excluding Chinese markets. The geographic concentration is striking: the UK accounts for roughly 42.7 percent of launch capacity at $303 million, with Asia at $160.7 million, then France, the United States and the rest of Europe.

What actually gets covered

Pre-launch

Damage during manufacture, testing and transport to the launch site. Usually a property policy rather than a space policy, though the transition point to launch cover needs care.

Launch

Typically attaching at intentional ignition and running through to a defined point after separation, often including initial in-orbit testing. This is where the concentration of risk sits and where rates are hardest.

In-orbit

Annual cover for the operational life, renewable. Responds to total loss, constructive total loss and partial loss, with partial loss usually measured against a defined capacity or transponder metric.

Third party liability

Cover for damage to people or property outside the launch participants. For a US licensee this is sized to the FAA’s maximum probable loss determination, capped at $500 million by statute. We set out how that interacts with the contract in our piece on cross waivers and indemnification.

Why the cross waiver matters to the underwriter

The cross waiver in the launch services agreement is not just a contractual nicety. It determines what the insurer is actually on risk for.

Because each participant bears its own property loss regardless of fault, an in-orbit policy on the satellite responds to the satellite’s loss and has no subrogation route against the launch provider. The premium reflects that. If a contract were negotiated without an effective flow down, the risk profile changes and the underwriter needs to know.

This is the most common practical failure we see described. The contract team and the broker work from different assumptions, and the mismatch only becomes visible after a loss.

What operators should expect at renewal

Aon’s own guidance for 2026 is that hard market conditions persist through the early part of the year, with possible easing later if profitability holds. Placements with large sums insured remain difficult and underwriters are described as extremely selective.

Practically, three things follow. Large single risks will need to be spread across more markets than they were five years ago, which means more brokers, more disclosure and more time. Loss history and heritage matter more than they did in a soft market, so a new bus design without flight heritage will pay for it. And the flight-only structures that grew in 2025 exist because they let underwriters take a defined slice rather than the whole exposure, so they are worth discussing early rather than treating as a fallback.

The short version

• International Dark-Sky Association v FCC, No. 22-1337, was decided by the D.C. Circuit on 12 July 2024.
• The order under review was the FCC’s conditional authorisation of 7,500 second generation Starlink satellites, FCC 22-91.
• IDA got through the standing door on aesthetic injury to stargazing members, where a competitor had failed two years earlier on debris risk.
• On the merits the FCC won. Its categorical exclusion for satellite licensing survived arbitrary and capricious review.

Two D.C. Circuit decisions, two years apart, decide almost everything about whether environmental law can be used to slow down a satellite constellation. Read together they produce an awkward result: the courthouse door is open to the right plaintiff, and there is almost nothing useful on the other side of it.

The first case, and a correction worth making

A great deal of commentary refers to a 2023 D.C. Circuit decision in Viasat v FCC on the Starlink Gen2 environmental review. There is no such decision. The confusion is worth clearing up before going further.

Viasat, Inc. v. FCC, 47 F.4th 769, was decided on 26 August 2022, Nos. 21-1123 and consolidated cases, opinion by Judge Katsas. The order under review was the FCC’s Second Modification Order permitting SpaceX to lower part of its first generation constellation, not Gen2.

The court never reached NEPA. Viasat’s space debris theory failed on Article III standing. A petitioner must show both that the risk is substantial and that the challenged action substantially increases it, and the causal chain, a SpaceX satellite is struck, a debris field is created, a Viasat satellite is struck, did not cross the line from speculative to certainly impending. Viasat’s economic injury from orbital crowding fell outside NEPA’s zone of interests. A co-petitioner failed on conclusory affidavits.

The lesson operators took from Viasat was that debris risk is not a viable standing theory for a commercial competitor.

The second case

International Dark-Sky Association, Inc. v. FCC, No. 22-1337, was decided on 12 July 2024 by a panel of Judges Rao, Childs and Senior Circuit Judge Ginsburg, opinion by Judge Rao.

The order under review was the FCC’s partial grant of 1 December 2022, FCC 22-91, conditionally authorising 7,500 second generation Starlink satellites.

Standing

IDA succeeded where Viasat had failed, and the difference is instructive. It did not argue debris. It argued light pollution, and it established associational standing on aesthetic injury to members whose stargazing is affected by satellite brightness. The injury was concrete, traceable to the authorisation, and germane to the organisation’s purpose.

That is a real doctrinal opening. An environmental or astronomical organisation with affected members can challenge a constellation authorisation. A competitor complaining about congestion cannot.

Merits

Having got through the door, IDA lost.

The Commission had applied its categorical exclusion under 47 CFR 1.1306(a), which treats satellite licensing as a category of action that does not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment, and had found no extraordinary circumstances requiring an environmental assessment.

The court held that was reasonable. In upholding the finding it pointed to ESA studies of atmospheric reentry effects, SpaceX’s mitigations including lower operating orbits and brightness reduction measures, and the FAA’s programmatic environmental assessment.

What the two cases add up to

Three propositions survive.

First, a competitor cannot use orbital debris risk to force NEPA review of a rival’s constellation. Viasat closes that.

Second, an environmental or astronomical organisation can get standing on aesthetic and dark skies grounds. Dark-Sky opens that.

Third, the FCC’s categorical exclusion for satellite licensing survives arbitrary and capricious review, and the Commission’s reliance on external studies and operator mitigations was enough. Constellation NEPA challenges are very hard to win on the merits.

The pressure the cases created

The categorical exclusion has been a target for longer than the litigation. GAO report GAO-23-105005, published in November 2022, recommended that the FCC reexamine its environmental review process for large constellations, noting that the exclusion had not been reviewed since 1986. The technology it was written for and the technology it now covers are not comparable.

The Commission’s response has run in the opposite direction from what the GAO had in mind.

In August 2025 the FCC adopted an NPRM, FCC 25-47, in WT Docket No. 25-217, modernising its NEPA rules in light of the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act amendments and Executive Order 14154. The proposal tentatively concludes that space based operations should be excluded from NEPA altogether as extraterritorial activities whose effects lie outside US jurisdiction, and would replace the broad categorical exclusion with an enumerated list.

That is a larger move than the categorical exclusion. A categorical exclusion is a determination that a class of action does not normally have significant effects, and it can be rebutted by extraordinary circumstances, which is what IDA argued. A conclusion that NEPA does not reach the activity at all removes the analysis entirely.

The American Astronomical Society has opposed. As at August 2026 no final order had been issued in the docket, so it remains pending.

The FAA is moving in parallel. Its NPRM of 30 July 2026 would waive NEPA and twelve other environmental statutes for launch and reentry licensing. We cover it in our piece on Part 450.

Where the next fight is

If both proposals are finalised, domestic environmental review largely exits US space regulation, and the constraint moves elsewhere.

Two places look likely. The ITU, where WRC-27 agenda item 1.16 addresses NGSO interference into radio astronomy and possible recognition of radio quiet zones for ALMA in Chile and the SKA in South Africa. And Europe, where the ENVI committee’s opinion on the EU Space Act pushes for mandatory environmental impact assessment and lifecycle responsibility.

There is also a newer front. Environmental groups have petitioned the FCC to pause applications for orbital data centre constellations pending environmental review, which would test the extraterritoriality theory against a class of mission with a very different profile.

The short version

• Orbital slots and spectrum are not owned. They are recorded, and the record is held by the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau.
• A filing has to be brought into use within seven years, and for both GSO and NGSO that means a satellite maintained on the notified assignment for 90 continuous days.
• Since WRC-19, NGSO constellations also face milestones of 10, 50 and 100 percent deployment at two, five and seven years after that.
• Missing a milestone does not cancel the filing. It shrinks it, which is the ITU’s answer to paper constellations.

Every satellite communications business rests on two assets it does not own. A position in the sky and a slice of spectrum. Neither is property. Both are entries in an international register maintained by the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau in Geneva, and the entries are made by national administrations, not by companies.

That structure explains a lot of behaviour that otherwise looks strange, including why an operator with no obvious connection to a small state files through it.

The filing chain

The process runs through the Radio Regulations, principally Article 9 for coordination and Article 11 for notification.

Advance Publication Information

Historically the first step, in which an administration told the Bureau what it intended to operate and the Bureau published it. Since WRC-19 the API stage was largely folded into the coordination request for most fixed satellite, broadcasting satellite and mobile satellite filings, so in practice most commercial systems now start at coordination.

Coordination request

Filed under RR No. 9.30. The Bureau publishes the request, identifies which administrations may be affected, and the notifying administration then has to coordinate bilaterally with each of them. This is where most of the time and most of the negotiation goes. There is no arbitrator. If two administrations cannot agree, the filing sits.

Notification and recording

The assignment is notified to the Bureau, examined for conformity with the Table of Frequency Allocations and the applicable coordination, and if the finding is favourable, recorded in the Master International Frequency Register. Recording is what confers the right to international recognition and protection from harmful interference.

Bringing into use

The assignment must be brought into use within seven years of receipt of the complete coordination request. Miss it and the filing is cancelled.

For a geostationary network, bringing into use means a space station with the capability to transmit or receive on the notified frequency, maintained at the notified orbital position, for a continuous 90 day period. For a non-geostationary system, it means deploying a satellite in one of the notified orbital planes and maintaining it for 90 continuous days.

The problem with 90 days and one satellite

Read the NGSO rule again. One satellite, 90 days, and a filing for a constellation of ten thousand is brought into use.

That was the position before 2019, and it produced exactly the behaviour you would expect. Filings for enormous constellations were made and held with minimal deployment, blocking coordination for anyone who came later. The industry term is paper satellites.

WRC-19 fixed it with Resolution 35, which added a milestone based deployment schedule measured from the end of the seven year bringing into use period.

Administrations must report deployment to the Bureau no later than 90 days after each milestone period expires.

The sanction is elegant. It is not cancellation. It is automatic reduction of the recorded satellite count. Fall short of the 10 percent milestone and the filing is capped at ten times the number actually deployed. Fall short of the 50 percent milestone and it is capped at twice the number deployed. Fall short at 100 percent and it is capped at exactly what is flying.

An operator that files for 10,000 and deploys 400 by milestone one keeps a filing for 4,000, not 10,000. The paper constellation shrinks to the size of the real one.

Why the flag state question arises

Filings are made by administrations. A company does not file. It asks a national administration to file on its behalf, and that administration then bears the coordination workload and any international consequences.

Administrations differ in how quickly they file, what they charge, how they prioritise between competing domestic applicants, and how vigorously they coordinate. Those differences are real and they are a legitimate factor in structuring, in the same way that vessel registration is in shipping.

They also feed the criticism that the system rewards administrative arbitrage rather than technical merit. That criticism has not produced a change in the rules, because the rules are made by the same administrations.

WRC-23 and what is coming at WRC-27

WRC-23 ran in Dubai from 20 November to 15 December 2023, with roughly 3,900 delegates from 163 Member States. Three outcomes matter for NGSO operators.

New orbital tolerances were introduced. For systems with eccentricity below 0.5 and apogee under 15,000 km, apogee, perigee and inclination tolerances are 70 km during deployment, tightening to 30 km afterwards.

A regulatory framework for Ka-band satellite to satellite links was approved, which lets LEO constellations relay through GSO and MEO systems.

On sustainability, the Radiocommunication Assembly adopted Resolution ITU-R 74 on sustainable use of spectrum and orbital resources, and the ITU began requesting post-mission disposal information from NGSO operators.

The flashpoint was equivalent power flux density. NGSO operators wanted a WRC-27 agenda item to revisit the EPFD limits that protect GSO networks, which date from a period when the NGSO population was tiny. GSO operators and several administrations opposed. EPFD revision was kept off the WRC-27 agenda, with technical studies continuing for a report without regulatory action.

For WRC-27, the items to watch are:

• AI 1.5, measures to limit unauthorised operation of NGSO earth stations and to allow a country to be excluded from an NGSO system’s service area. Both are technically contested.
• AI 1.16, NGSO interference into radio astronomy, including possible recognition of radio quiet zones for ALMA in Chile and the SKA in South Africa. This is now the main dark and quiet skies battleground inside the ITU.
• AI 1.12 to 1.14, new mobile satellite allocations including direct to device.

The gap the ITU does not fill

It is worth being clear about what this system does and does not do. The ITU allocates and records spectrum and orbital positions. It does not license satellites, it does not regulate debris, it does not adjudicate collisions and it has no enforcement arm.

An operator with a perfect ITU filing and no national authorisation cannot launch. An operator with both can still create a hazard nobody has authority to stop. That gap is the subject of our piece on space traffic management.

The short version

• The FCC replaced the 25 year post-mission disposal guideline with a five year maximum in Second Report and Order FCC 22-74, adopted 29 September 2022.
• It is codified at 47 CFR 25.283(e) and became effective 9 September 2024, with compliance required from 29 September 2024.
• It applies to spacecraft ending their mission in or passing through low Earth orbit below 2,000 km and planning uncontrolled reentry, including non-US systems granted US market access.
• Satellites already in orbit are grandfathered. Anything launched after 29 September 2024 is not.

For twenty five years the working number in orbital debris mitigation was twenty five years. A satellite in low Earth orbit was expected to clear the region within a quarter century of the end of its mission. That figure came out of NASA analysis in the 1990s and worked its way into the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee guidelines, then into national practice.

It was a reasonable number for a world launching dozens of satellites a year. It is not a reasonable number for a world launching thousands.

What the rule says

The FCC’s Second Report and Order, FCC 22-74, was adopted on 29 September 2022 in IB Docket Nos. 18-313 and 22-271. The core change is short: for the spacecraft it covers, post-mission disposal must be completed as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of mission.

The obligation is codified at 47 CFR 25.283(e), with parallel amendments for experimental licences at 47 CFR 5.64 and amateur operations at 47 CFR 97.207.

Three limits on scope matter.

Orbit. It applies to space stations that will terminate their mission in, or pass through, low Earth orbit below 2,000 km, and that plan uncontrolled atmospheric reentry. Geostationary disposal continues to be handled by the graveyard orbit requirement, which is a separate obligation and the one DISH failed, as we discuss in our case note on that consent decree.

Reach. It applies both to systems licensed by the FCC and to non-US systems granted access to the US market. This is the important commercial point. A non-US constellation that wants to sell service in the United States takes on the obligation.

Timing. The order was adopted in September 2022 but the rule became effective on 9 September 2024 with compliance required from 29 September 2024, following the standard Paperwork Reduction Act sequence. Satellites already on orbit are exempt. Systems that were authorised but not yet launched had a two year grandfathering window running from adoption. Anything launched after 29 September 2024 complies or does not fly.

Why five years and not zero

Five years is not a physics number. It is a compromise between two positions.

Operators argued for a longer window on cost grounds. Deorbit capability is mass, mass is money, and for a cubesat the propulsion needed to guarantee a rapid deorbit can be a meaningful fraction of the spacecraft.

Debris researchers argued that even five years leaves a long tail. The relevant risk is not one dead satellite. It is the aggregate population of uncontrolled objects in the shells where constellations operate, and the probability that any two of them meet.

The Commission landed on five years plus a “as soon as practicable” obligation, which does real work. An operator that can deorbit in one year cannot elect to take five.

What it means for an application

For most operators the rule does not change the application form so much as the engineering that has to sit behind it. Three things need to be demonstrable at filing.

Disposal capability

Either propulsive deorbit, a drag device, or an orbit low enough that natural decay does the job inside five years. Natural decay is the cheapest route and it is why so many smallsat constellations cluster below about 550 km. Above roughly 600 km, passive compliance stops being realistic.

Reliability

The FCC expects a stated post-mission disposal reliability. If a percentage of the constellation is going to fail before disposal, that has to be in the analysis, and for large constellations a small failure rate is a large absolute number.

Casualty risk

Uncontrolled reentry raises human casualty risk on the ground. The working threshold used across the US agencies is one in ten thousand for a given reentry event, and design for demise is the usual answer.

Where the FCC has gone since

The five year rule now sits inside a much larger overhaul. In October 2025 the Commission proposed replacing Part 25 wholesale with a new Part 100, and on 22 July 2026 it adopted a Report and Order, FCC 26-47, doing exactly that.

The headline changes for operators are procedural rather than substantive on debris: a uniform 15 day public notice period, a 30 day deadline for the Commission either to put an application on public notice or say what is missing, a 60 day decision deadline after comments close, a stated presumption in favour of granting conforming applications, voluntary annual NGSO processing rounds, $10 million surety bonds for processing round applicants declining to zero at 90 percent deployment, and 20 year licence terms as standard.

Part 25 remains in force until the Space Bureau announces the effective date of Part 100 by public notice. Until then, cite Part 25.

The honest assessment

The five year rule is the most consequential unilateral debris measure any regulator has taken, and it was taken by a communications regulator using its licensing power rather than by a space agency or a treaty body. That is worth sitting with.

It also shows the limits of that route. The FCC can only reach systems it licenses or that want US market access. It cannot reach a constellation that never sells into the United States, and it has no jurisdiction over the objects already up there, which is where the accumulated risk lives.