Making DOT 'Front Door' to New Outer Space Ventures Seen as Slow Going
Congress has discussed making the Department of Transportation the lead agency on regulating and overseeing any nontraditional space missions, taking no action yet, said George Nield, Federal Aviation Administration associate administrator-commercial space transportation. The FAA, as part of DOT, "would be happy to play sort of lead role -- not take over everything but be the front door," Nield said, saying the private sector "would love to have one-stop shopping." Nield said Friday that House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee member Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., has been leading the push. Bridenstine's office didn't comment.
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The 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to recommend an approach for regulating commercial space operations. In a report earlier this year, OSTP recommended DOT be the lead in granting authorizations to space missions, coordinating with the departments of Defense, State and Commerce, with NASA and with other federal agencies on the authorizations. That DOT-first approach wouldn't apply to operations currently overseen by the FCC, OSTP said.
The traditional regulatory model, with the FCC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the FAA overseeing different aspects of commercial space operations, doesn't fit some emerging applications such as satellite servicing, commercial space stations or massive small satellite constellations, Nield said at a Women in Aerospace conference. "Some of these new, nontraditional things, it's not clear which box to put them in."
That lack of regulatory clarity is hurting investment, with investors being wary of putting money into such low-earth orbit business proposals without some kind of regulatory latticework, said Robyn Gatens, NASA deputy director-International Space Station Division. Other nations with interests in space commercialization are largely watching the U.S. to see what regulatory framework develops, she said.
Regulators and other federal agencies are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing commercial space universe, leading to "a reactive and conservative posture when it comes to new ventures," said Audrey Schaffer, director-space strategy and plans, Defense Department Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. That posture is changing as agencies see ways to take advantage of those emerging technologies, she said.
The commercial space industry is moving increasingly quickly, conference panelists said. Nield said suborbital human spaceflight likely will be a "widespread regular occurrence" within a decade, with companies making possibly multiple flights a week. NASA hopes, with the International Space Station currently only authorized to operate through 2024, that commercial companies will begin building their own low earth orbit platforms, letting the agency transition out of being "the anchor tenant" of low-earth orbit and focus on Mars missions, Gatens said.
NASA is wrestling with how to decide when to segue out of operations that potentially could be taken over by private enterprise, Gatens said, pointing to its growing business launching cubesats from ISS. "When do we transition that, to set that industry free? We don't have the answer yet."
NASA is more open to "nontraditional partnerships" than ever, said Kira Blackwell, program executive, Office of the Chief Technologist. The agency is about to launch an initiative in which it will invite "nontraditional innovators" to pitch solutions to the agency's chief problems before NASA contractors, with the hope those private-sector parties work together on them and even develop the technology also for commercial use, Blackwell said. The first such pitch will be in December.