Following a record fiscal year 2025 that saw the FAA license more than 200 commercial space operations, orbital activity is set to explode in 2026 under a new licensing framework.
The regulator on Tuesday announced that licensing for all commercial space operations, regardless of the spacecraft or mission, will now occur under Part 450—a regulation created in 2021 that is only now taking full effect.
The idea behind the regulation is to replace legacy rules—which contained separate provisions for different types of launch and reentry vehicles—with performance-based standards that apply to all vehicles, simplifying the licensing process and letting them launch more frequently.
The space launch industry found this latticework of rules cumbersome. Parts 415 and 417 covered launches of expendable spacecraft. Part 431 covered launch and reentry of reusable vehicles. Part 435 covered reentry of nonreusable vehicles.
Expendable vehicles faced more detailed, prescriptive requirements than reusable ones. The FAA in a 2019 notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) said its requirements for expendable spacecraft were “too prescriptive and one-size-fits-all,” and for reusable vehicles too broad.
Part 450 combines Parts 415, 417, 431, and 435 and covers operations with any spacecraft, expendable or reusable. It also permits a single license to cover multiple launches and reentries—and different vehicle configurations—across multiple sites.
SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rockets from two sites in Florida and one in California. Under legacy rules, separate licenses were required for each of those sites. Transitioning to Part 450 allows it to launch Falcon 9 from all three under the same authorization.
Similarly, SpaceX wants to launch its massive Starship rocket—which already had Part 450 authorization—out of Texas and Florida.
Launch providers operating under the four now-obsolete regulations had until March 9 to switch to Part 450. The FAA said several completed the transition before the deadline, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon crew vehicle, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha, Rocket Lab’s Electron, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas and Vulcan.
Other spacecraft with Part 450 authorization include Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and Stratolaunch’s Roc mothership and Talon aircraft. The FAA has handed out 14 such licenses since 2021.
Applicants must complete a litany of safety evaluations and show compliance through government standards, industry consensus standards, or other means specified by the FAA in advisory circulars (ACs).
New Space Race
The FAA last year shattered its previous high of 146 licensed commercial space operations in fiscal year 2024. So far in FY26, it has licensed 93 operations. The agency expects to authorize anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 launches over the next decade, per its latest 10-year forecast.
Illustrating the industry’s rapid growth, the FAA in August commemorated its 1,000th licensed space operation. It said half of those have been since FY22.
“As commercial and government space launch activities increase, it is imperative that airspace users account for potential disruptions due to launch operations,” the agency wrote in a January Safety Alert For Operators (SAFO), which described the potential for commercial spacecraft to suffer “catastrophic failures resulting in debris fields.”
Though the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is licensing more operations than ever before, U.S. officials want to see that trend continue. Many have been vocal about the potential for China—which aims to land humans on the moon in 2030—to usurp U.S. dominance.
“Inefficient permitting processes discourage investment and innovation, limiting the ability of U.S. companies to lead in global space markets,” reads a June 2025 White House executive order that directed regulators to streamline the licensing process.
However, launch providers and lawmakers have criticized the FAA for taking too long to review Part 450 applications.
Even the agency itself has acknowledged the lengthy process. Speaking at a conference in January 2025, Dan Murray, executive director of the Office of Operational Safety within the AST, estimated there were 20 older launch licenses that still needed to be transitioned—and that doing so would be “challenging.” Kelvin Coleman, the FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said meeting the March 9 deadline would be a “squeeze.”
The space industry has made its qualms known for years. During a 2023 Senate hearing, Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability for SpaceX, said that the “entire regulatory system is at risk of collapse” due to the slow pace of the transition to Part 450.
In a House hearing the following year, Dave Cassova, president of the Commercial Space Federation, said the rule’s implementation created “severe licensing delays, confusion, and is jeopardizing our long-held leadership position.” That hearing drew bipartisan condemnation of the FAA by lawmakers.
During the hearing, SpaceX, which did not attend, wrote that the Part 450 process was “frivolous” and accused the FAA of holding up a Starship test flight. The company said the rocket was ready to fly in August, but it was told that the FAA would not issue a license until late November.
Then-FAA administrator Mike Whitaker defended the licensing delays as necessary for safety. Ultimately, though, the agency issued a license for the Starship flight in October, without explaining how it expedited the process. The mission flew the following day.
There remain concerns that Part 450 will do little to streamline the licensing process, given the FAA’s struggles to meet license review deadlines. However, the White House’s June order could further simplify the task by eliminating National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews and outdated portions of the regulation.
The order also created a new deregulation and innovation officer within the Transportation Department and called for a political appointee—rather than a civil servant—to lead the FAA’s AST.
At the same time, some stakeholders worry the regulator is being too permissive.
After SpaceX’s Starship exploded in January 2025, the FAA made the unusual move of greenlighting a subsequent mission without requiring SpaceX to complete its investigation into the previous flight. The next flight in March exploded during the same phase of the mission, raining debris over the Caribbean for a second time in three months.
In February, the FAA greenlit new Starship trajectories that will take it over the U.S. mainland and are expected to disrupt tens of thousands of commercial flights. Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), wrote the FAA AST in October and warned that the agency “continues to ignore fundamental airspace safety and operational issues essential to a safe and efficient [National Airspace System [NAS].”
Minh Nguyen, deputy associate administrator for the FAA’s AST, stressed in a statement Tuesday that Part 450 will give launch providers greater flexibility “while maintaining safety for the public.”
