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Let’s say you have designed a spacecraft that will travel from Earth orbit to Mars.\u00a0 Do you, a U.S. entity incorporated in one of the states of the Union, need a license from a federal agency for the activity of traveling between planets?\u00a0 The proper answer is no.\u00a0 Sure, other licenses will apply to related activities, but not to that one.<\/p>\n
Being a savvy purchaser of launch services, you plan to place your spacecraft on board an expendable launch vehicle (ELV) operated by Launches ‘R Us.\u00a0 LRU will first get your spacecraft off Earth.\u00a0 Therefore, LRU needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.\u00a0 Both of you may need communications licenses from the Federal Communications Commission to transmit back to the United States.\u00a0 All space travelers want to be able to phone home.\u00a0 If you or LRU have cameras capable of sensing Earth you will need remote sensing licenses from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.\u00a0 You might, after all, take pictures of your home planet.<\/p>\n
But you won’t need an interplanetary transport license because there isn’t such a thing.\u00a0 Nor is there a certificate, permit, approval, authorization, or other term meaning the same thing as “authorize.”<\/p>\n
FAA Licensing<\/strong>.\u00a0 What about the FAA launch license, you ask.\u00a0 Won’t that cover the trip to Mars?\u00a0 (Being as savvy as you are, you are thinking it might be good to remain eligible for the FAA’s so-called “indemnification.”) The definitions in Chapter 509 of Title 51 of the U.S. Code (aka the Commercial Space Launch Act) show that at some point a launch ends.\u00a0 The regulations by which the FAA implements the law are a little more clear.\u00a0 Section 50902(7)<\/strong><\/a> of the statute says that “launch<\/em> means to place or try to place a launch vehicle or reentry vehicle and any payload or human being from Earth–(A) in a suborbital trajectory; (B) in Earth orbit in outer space; or (C) otherwise in outer space ,….”\u00a0 In other words, as far as the law is concerned, it is the placing<\/em> of something somewhere that constitutes a launch.\u00a0 The launch operator has placed your spacecraft “otherwise in outer space.”\u00a0 Arguably, that could be Mars.\u00a0 However, the FAA’s regulations recognize the subtle point and how launch only covers the placing of something somewhere, and clarify that launch ends for an expandable launch vehicle “after the licensee’s last exercise of control over its launch vehicle.” 14 CFR 401.5<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 After releasing your spacecraft, the launch operator will shut down its upper stage to comply with the FAA’s debris mitigation requirements, and launch will be over.<\/p>\n The hypothetical posited above is easy.\u00a0 Because LRU operates ELVs and not your spacecraft, LRU needs the launch license.\u00a0 Not you.\u00a0 Your spacecraft is a payload.\u00a0 What if LRU operated a reusable launch vehicle?\u00a0 Section 401.5 of the FAA’s regulations says that in that case, “launch ends after deployment of the payload.”\u00a0 Again, as the payload operator you don’t need a launch license–it wasn’t your launch vehicle that got you where you are, after all–and the launch licensee, having deployed its payload, that is, your spacecraft, is now done with its launch.<\/p>\n I can see that you are getting kind of excited.\u00a0 You think you are going to avoid all sorts of paperwork.\u00a0 Still, you pause:\u00a0 this is all very logical, but is it right?\u00a0 (We all know that the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand.)\u00a0 Now I’m getting excited, because yes, yes it is right, and I can show you where someone very authoritative said the same thing.\u00a0 Let us turn to the Committee Report<\/strong><\/a> that accompanied Congress’s grant of reentry authority to the FAA.<\/p>\n Legislative History<\/strong>.\u00a0 First, some historical context.\u00a0 The FAA’s space office, back when it was still located in the Department of Transportation, started out with just the authority to license launches and the operation of launch sites.\u00a0 When it tried to license a reentry of a reentry vehicle on the grounds that the vehicle was launching from space to Earth, the office received a stern letter from its Congressional overseers that the office was exceeding its authority.\u00a0 Eventually, however, Congress did in the late 1990’s grant the office, now in the FAA, the responsibility for and the authority to license the reentry of reentry vehicles, namely, vehicles designed to return to Earth substantially intact<\/strong>.<\/a>\u00a0 It granted this authority with clear reminders that the FAA should not exceed it:<\/p>\n The original Act intended that a launch ends, as far as the launch vehicle’s payload is concerned, once the launch vehicle places the payload in Earth orbit or in the planned trajectory in outer space. The Committee wishes to make clear that the Secretary has no authority to license or regulate activities that take place between the end of the launch phase and the beginning of the reentry phase, such as maneuvers between two Earth orbits or other non-reentry operations in Earth orbit; or after the end of a launch phase in the case of missions where the payload is not a reentry vehicle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You will note that the Committee said that once the launch operator puts the payload on its planned trajectory in outer space launch is over.\u00a0 Even if your spacecraft qualified as a reentry vehicle, the transit between Earth and Mars requires no launch license from the FAA because it “has no authority to license or regulate activities that take place between” launch and reentry.\u00a0 Your spacecraft is not a reentry vehicle even if it lands on Mars, because the law defines a reentry vehicle as one designed to return to Earth, and Earth is not Mars.<\/p>\n Outer Space Treaty<\/strong>.\u00a0 Finally, because you really are that savvy, you ask about Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty.\u00a0 It requires that the countries who signed the treaty, and that includes the United States, must authorize and continuously supervise the acts of their nationals in outer space.\u00a0 You are a U.S. national.\u00a0 Does this mean you can’t send your private spacecraft to Mars without an interplanetary transport license even though none exists?\u00a0 No, it doesn’t.\u00a0 Article VI is not self-executing, which means that Congress would have to pass a law to cover interplanetary transport.\u00a0 For a longer explanation, see my Senate testimony<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Going by last year’s press release on Moon Express, the FAA may have a different view, but that’s why it would be good for the President to issue an Executive Order<\/strong><\/a> on this topic.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>:\u00a0 I now have a brief article on the Article VI issue here<\/a> which gives more focused detail.\u00a0 If you really want to go wild on geeking out, the full paper is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s say you have designed a spacecraft that will travel from Earth orbit to Mars.\u00a0 Do you, a U.S. entity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n