US Commerce office picks first four companies to pilot its approval path for novel space missions

The US Commerce Department's Office of Space Commerce has chosen the first four companies to try out its Space Commerce Certification, a single federal review meant for commercial space activities that today's licensing rules do not clearly cover. In a post dated November 12 (its certification page dates the announcement November 11), the office named Cowboy Space Corporation of San Carlos, California; Portal Space Systems of Bothell, Washington; SpaceMD, a subsidiary of Redwire Corporation, of Chantilly, Virginia; and Starcloud of Redmond, Washington.

The office said it received nearly 40 applications to its call for interest, with proposed missions “ranging from Low Earth Orbit, to the Lunar surface, out to the depths of the Solar System.” The post does not describe the missions the four selected companies put forward. It says the office will now work with them “alongside our partners in the interagency and White House.”

We are ready to get their innovative capabilities to ‘yes.’

Why a new approval path

The program grows out of Executive Order 14335, “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry,” signed on August 13, 2025. Its section 5 gave the Commerce secretary 150 days to propose a process for individual mission authorizations covering activities that fall under Article VI of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty but are “not clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks.” The proposal had to include a definitive timeline for granting or denying an authorization and clear requirements for applicants, and the section does not apply to human spaceflight.

The office's certification page gives satellite servicing, commercial space stations and manufacturing on the Moon as examples of what it has in mind. The idea is one application and one interagency review. The page is careful about the limits: CRSRA, the FAA and the FCC keep their statutory obligations, and applicants may still need separate permission from them, but the steps to get those permissions can be coordinated through the single process.

What the pilot does, and what it does not

The August notice sets out the steps. Each selected company fills in a certification application, which the office reviews with the FAA, the FCC, the Department of War, the State Department and NASA to find “areas of interagency concern.” The office and the company then work out adjustments, after which the office intends to issue a certification that may include recommended best practices for the mission.

The pilot is voluntary and non-binding. “Grant of an SCC during this pilot phase, on its own, will have no direct legal effect,” the notice says, and the FAA and FCC decide whether and how to take a certification into account, so participants still have to meet both agencies' licensing requirements. The longer-term aim is to speed things up: information gathered through the certification could one day be used to satisfy or waive FCC rules on orbital debris mitigation strategies, or stand in for parts of the FAA's payload reviews, the notice says.

The notice also said the office would be “highly selective” and would favor missions that are critical to the industry, likely to happen and high in utility. Its August announcement added that showing companies a clear path to approval could help them raise private investment, and that the office would weigh that in choosing early applicants.

Next steps

The office says it will first review and refine the inaugural application form with the four companies, then make it public. It expects the form to change as it certifies different kinds of activity, naming in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing, orbital data centers and lunar surface activity as examples. It also plans to introduce a way to collect public comment, with details to follow. The certification is one part of the 2025 order, which separately told the Transportation Secretary to reevaluate, amend or rescind the launch and reentry regulations in Part 450 of title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations.