Issue an EO on whole-of-government commercial space licensing policy

Partially done

Printed page 677 21. Department of Commerce

“The President should, by executive order, direct the Office of Space Commerce, working with the National Space Council, to establish a whole-of-government policy for licensing and oversight of commercial space operations.”

What has happened

Aug 13, 2025 Partially done
Executive Order 14335, Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry, is the order the Quote asks for and does much of what the Quote wants: sec. 5 directs the Secretary of Commerce to propose, within 150 days, 'a process for individualized mission authorizations for activities that are covered by Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, but not clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks', soliciting affected agencies' feedback and setting a definitive timeline — a whole-of-government licensing gap-filler; sec. 3 and 4 direct Transportation, Defense, Interior, NASA and CEQ to align launch, reentry and spaceport reviews; and sec. 6(b) elevates the Office of Space Commerce (see #1882). What it does not do is route the policy through the National Space Council as the Quote specifies: EO 14369 of 2025-12-18 revoked EO 14056, the order that constituted the Council.
- Executive Order 14335, Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry
  Primary Executive branch Aug 13, 2025

Research log

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

Research notes

The order was read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-08-19/html/2025-15822.htm.

partial and not done on two grounds, both recorded in the note: the mission-authorization process was ordered to be proposed to the President’s advisers, not established — no Federal Register document in the window establishes it — and the National Space Council leg of the Quote was removed rather than used.

Sequel searched: presidential-actions.ndjson and fr-presdocu.ndjson for space produce EO 14335 (2025-08-13), EO 14369 Ensuring American Space Superiority (2025-12-18) and National Security Presidential Memorandum 17, The National Space Transportation Policy (2026-08-20). NSPM-17 was read: it is a transportation and industrial-base policy that assigns Commerce spectrum, export and reentry-site tasks; it does not establish the commercial licensing and oversight policy this Quote names.

Scan triage 2026-10-04 (twelfth run): on 2026-10-05 the FAA published five proposed rules amending its commercial launch and reentry licensing regulations (14 CFR part 450). They cover physical containment (FR 2026-20386), electronic application submission (2026-20387), flight safety analysis (2026-20388), a lightning-hazard exception (2026-20391) and far-field overpressure blast analysis (2026-20392). By their abstracts, all five “streamline the licensing process”. This is the Department of Transportation’s licensing, the kind of review EO 14335 §3 directs DOT to align. It is not the whole-of-government policy through the Office of Space Commerce that this Quote names, so there is no event. Whether the preambles cite EO 14335 was not read. The matcher printed one of the five, as a §2 tail row against #1741, and none against this item.

Action: issue
Object: executive order on commercial space licensing and oversight policy
ID: 1883