Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

21. Department of Commerce · Minor

Advocate FCC licensing decisions favoring the commercial space industry

Done

687 21. Department of Commerce

“Support the commercial space industry. Advocate for licensing decisions at the Federal Communications Commission that continue to enable U.S. dominance in the commercial space industry.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The Assistant Secretary issued a public statement welcoming the FCC's approval of SpaceX's Gen2 Version 3 application, the largest commercial satellite authorization of the window. Together with the Space Launch Frequency Coordination Portal that NTIA built to move launch spectrum requests through the federal review process (announced 2025-10-01, launched 2026-04-08), this is the advocacy practice the Quote asks for, and it is in place and operating.

  2. Partially done

    NTIA and NASA jointly recommended that the FCC allocate the 18 GHz band to bolster commercial space activities — federal advocacy at the FCC for a commercial-space-favoring spectrum decision.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

§3’s test — “is the thing the Quote names now in force / in existence” — applied to a practice rather than an object: NTIA, which is the Commerce bureau that speaks for the executive branch at the FCC, is advocating for licensing outcomes that favor the commercial space industry, and did so repeatedly in the window. The 18 GHz recommendation, the Gen2 statement, the launch-spectrum portal and NTIA’s filings in the FCC’s Space Modernization for the 21st Century and satellite spectrum-sharing proceedings are all in the same direction.

Dating (§4): the done event is dated from the Gen2 statement rather than from the FCC’s own order, because the ask is about Commerce’s advocacy, not about the FCC’s decision.

Boundary call, flagged to spot-checks.md. partial is the alternative reading, on the ground that an advocacy ask is never finished. The reading taken follows §3b’s treatment of continuation asks: a practice ask is done while the practice is in place, and would become reversed if NTIA switched sides.

Action
other
Object
Federal Communications Commission commercial space licensing decisions
ID
1916