The FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is a branch of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responsible for regulating and promoting the U.S. commercial space transportation industry. AST licenses private sector launches of space payloads on expendable launch vehicles and commercial space launch facilities. It also sets insurance requirements and ensures compliance with U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Key activities include licensing launches and reentries, regulating launch site operations, and working to integrate commercial space operations into the National Airspace System.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
The FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued an order on 2021-07-20 describing its FAA Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program and the criteria for awarding wings.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is performing an environmental review of Starship launches from Boca Chica.
Virgin Galactic announced on 2021-06-25 that the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation updated its existing launch license for SpaceShipTwo to allow the company to fly spaceflight participants in addition to crew.
Momentus missed the opportunity to launch its first tug Vigoride-1 on SpaceX’s Transporter-1 rideshare mission in January because it could not complete a Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation payload review in time.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation notified Momentus on 2025-05-10 that it had denied the company’s application for a payload review.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation delayed completion of the final environmental impact statement for Spaceport Camden and set a new expected release date of 2021-04-20.
The National Academy of Public Administration published a report on 2020-08-20 concluding that the Commerce Department was the best agency for civil space traffic management compared to NASA, the Department of Defense, and the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation received an average score of 2.25 in the NAPA assessment.
The transportation, housing and urban development spending bill includes $27,555,000 for the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which matches the FAA's request and is $1,500,000 above its 2020 level.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation had been developing space traffic management concepts for several years prior to the assignment of civil STM responsibility to the Commerce Department under SPD-3.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation published the Starship Prototype Launch Vehicle launch license on 2020-05-28.
SpaceX had received a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation on 2020-05-28.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued a launch site operators license to the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority on 2020-05-05.
The FAA formally opened the Office of Spaceports as part of a reorganization of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation announced in early April.
The Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation completed a reorganization announced nearly a year earlier.
A follow-on low-altitude hop test similar to the August 2019 Starhopper flight would have required an experimental permit from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which had not been issued.
SpaceX had not received a launch license or experimental permit from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation for a suborbital Starship test flight but had filed two Federal Communications Commission applications for telemetry and vehicle radar operations requesting six-month periods of operations starting in mid-March.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation published a draft environmental assessment on 2020-02-27 regarding SpaceX launch activities from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center and Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Federal Aviation Administration requested $27,555,000 for the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal.
Astra received a launch license from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation on 2020-01-09 for a mission from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska.