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.