The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed a long-running overhaul of its commercial space licensing process, moving all launch and reentry approvals under the agency’s Part 450 rule in a shift intended to reduce regulatory hurdles as US spaceflight activity continues to intensify.
The agency said on March 17, 2026, that all licensing must now occur under Part 450, which replaces four older sets of rules with a single performance-based framework.
The change is significant because it gives launch operators more flexibility in how they demonstrate compliance, while also allowing a single license to cover a broader portfolio of missions.
According to the FAA, Part 450 can support multiple vehicle configurations, mission profiles, and even multiple launch and reentry sites under one license, reducing the number of separate approvals operators need to secure. The agency says the rule also lowers administration and costs for both industry and regulators.
The FAA issued the Part 450 rule in 2021 as commercial launch activity accelerated, but it allowed the old and new frameworks to operate in parallel for five years so companies could transition their licenses. That transition period ended on March 9, 2026, and the FAA says no new license applications are being accepted under the legacy regulations, which expired no later than that date.
The operators that completed the transition by the deadline include some of the biggest names in the commercial launch market: Blue Origin’s New Shepard, Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon, Rocket Lab’s Electron, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas and Vulcan. The FAA said it has issued 14 Part 450 licenses since the rule took effect in March 2021.
The change comes as the FAA faces mounting pressure to keep pace with a rapidly expanding commercial space market. In recent years, the number of US launches has surged, driven largely by SpaceX but also by newer entrants seeking a larger share of the market. By fully shifting to Part 450, the FAA is signaling that it wants a licensing system better suited to higher launch volumes and more diverse missions without changing its core public-safety mandate.
