THE WOODLANDS, Texas — The Federal Aviation Administration is requesting a major budget increase for its commercial space office to both keep up with growing launch demand and prepare for potential new regulatory roles.
The FAA, in its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal released March 11, requested $57.13 million for its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST. That is a 36% increase from the $42.018 million AST received in the final fiscal year 2024 spending bill passed last week.
A large portion of that increase, $7.9 million, would go towards hiring additional staff to support launch and reentry licensing and oversight of those activities. “AST needs additional licensing and permitting evaluators, environmental protection and stakeholder engagement specialists, and safety analysts to double its average annual new authorization determination capacity from 5 to 10 while keeping pace with requests for modifications and renewals,” the FAA stated in its budget documents.
The funding would be used to both hire additional staff and contractors to support licensing and oversight work. The resources would also allow AST to address other areas, such as potential changes to streamlined launch regulations known as Part 450 that have been criticized by industry as being difficult to implement. The FAA announced in February it would create an aerospace rulemaking committee to study potential changes to Part 450.
“AST has already recognized some shortcomings in the part 450 rule, as well as gaps in standards and guidance, that could be readily resolved with additional resources to support policy development and rulemaking,” the FAA stated in the budget request.
While AST has grown significantly in recent years, it is still struggling to keep up with a much higher pace of commercial launch activities. “We’ve seen increased demand for our services over the last few years,” Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for…
Read the full article here
