Why It Matters
Commercial space launch and reentry operators could meet safety requirements for uncontrolled atmospheric returns by showing their vehicles would break apart enough to protect against "a single event expected to produce multiple casualties," under a rule the Transportation Department proposes.
Operators of such returns currently have one practical compliance option: a casualty calculation the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) calls "a labor-intensive calculation." The proposal follows Executive Order 14335, "Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry," issued Aug. 13, 2025, which directed the transportation secretary to reevaluate, amend or rescind commercial launch and reentry licensing rules.
The FAA expects about 40 new license applications over the next five years, though fewer would be affected by this proposal. Comments are open until Dec. 9.
The Big Picture
The FAA says the change "provides an equivalent level of safety to the current requirements." The agency describes the proposal as intended to reduce regulatory burdens for license applicants. The FAA characterizes the proposal as deregulatory because it estimates the rule would produce net cost savings. The agency has invited comments on its cost analysis and any economic, environmental or federalism impacts.
The proposed text would allow an operator to satisfy the high-consequence event requirement if a failure "results in sufficient breakup of the launch or reentry vehicle, including all vehicle components and undeployed payloads, during an uncontrolled atmospheric return." The option would not apply to controlled returns.
The rule would also define an uncontrolled atmospheric return as "the passive descent of a launch or reentry vehicle from orbit that occurs as a result of natural orbital decay and where there is no ability to control the vehicle's trajectory." The FAA says the term is not currently defined in regulation.
Broader Context
Currently, 14 CFR 450.101(c) requires operators to protect against high-consequence events by using flight abort, keeping the consequence of any reasonably foreseeable failure to no greater than 1 × 10⁻³ conditional expected casualties, or establishing sufficient demonstrated reliability. The proposal would divide the casualty-threshold option into two alternatives, retaining that threshold while adding the breakup demonstration. The other two options and the individual and collective risk criteria would remain unchanged.
The FAA says the existing methods effectively leave operators with the casualty calculation for these returns because flight abort cannot apply to an uncontrolled return and no such returns are close to meeting the reliability threshold. The current requirements have been in effect since March 10, 2021.
According to the FAA, the breakup demonstration would rely on the debris and consequence analyses operators already submit. The FAA estimates savings of approximately $5,777 per application in industry labor, based on 60 hours of aerospace engineer time, and $3,897 in FAA review costs, based on 30 hours of review time. Combined, these savings total $9,674 per application
The Bottom Line
Comments are due Dec. 9. The FAA says it may revise the proposal in response to comments. Comments may be submitted through regulations.gov under docket FAA-2026-9942, or by mail to Docket Operations, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, 5th Floor (W58-213), Washington, DC 20590-0001.
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