FAA moves to streamline space licensing as it preps for 1,000 launches a year

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed changes to its commercial space licensing rules as it prepares for as many as 1,000 launches a year by 2030.

The marked increase in space launches would amount to one every nine hours on average.

In 2025, the US accounted for 217 of the 329 commercial space launches worldwide, according to the US Department of Transportation. By 2035, the department expects the FAA to oversee 10,000 commercial space operations a year, a figure that includes both launches and reentries.

According to the proposal announced on November 5, 2026, the FAA plans to begin a broader overhaul of its licensing system in 2027. In the meantime, it is hiring aerospace engineers to review applications and evaluate the risks of individual missions.

The three rules it proposed on November 5 address questions operators face when applying for a license, including when they must abort a rocket flight and how to assess the danger of debris returning to Earth.

One proposal would give operators more flexibility over when they can switch off a rocket’s flight termination system. The FAA said it wrote the existing rule on the assumption that an operator would typically do so late in a flight, such as just before a rocket reaches orbit.

The change would allow an operator to turn the system off earlier and reactivate it later, provided the operator can show the flight meets the agency’s safety conditions for that phase.

A second proposal addresses how operators set the limits that trigger an abort. The FAA said some applicants read the current rule as requiring two separate casualty calculations for a rocket that veers off course. Others concluded they could choose which outcome to analyze. The revised wording would clarify how to account for the risks of both aborting a flight and allowing it to continue beyond the point where it can accomplish its mission.

The third proposal concerns vehicles that fall back to Earth as their orbits decay. Operators could use debris analysis they already submit to the FAA to show that a vehicle and its payload would break into pieces small enough to make multiple casualties from any one fragment unlikely. The FAA says that approach would provide the same level of protection as the more labor-intensive calculation operators use today.

The proposals follow five licensing changes the FAA put forward in October 2026. The agency is also seeking input on where to build new spaceports and whether to give launches priority along designated routes through US airspace.

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