Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Bureau of Industry and Security</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Parts 734, 740, 744, 746, and 774</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241004-0264]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0694-AJ87</RIN> <SUBJECT>Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this interim final rule (IFR), the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) makes changes to controls for spacecraft and related items under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). This IFR reduces license requirements on less sensitive items to reflect the close relations with certain countries to better facilitate space collaboration; and makes refinements and clarifications to existing controls. These changes will better enable a globally competitive U.S. space industrial base while continuing to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective October 23, 2024. Comments must be received by BIS no later than November 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments on this rule may be submitted to the Federal rulemaking portal at: <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> The <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> ID for this rule is: BIS-2024-0031. Please refer to RIN 0694-AJ87 in all comments. All filers using the portal should use the name of the person or entity submitting the comments as the name of their files, in accordance with the instructions below. Anyone submitting business confidential information should clearly identify the business confidential portion at the time of submission, file a statement justifying nondisclosure and referring to the specific legal authority claimed, and provide a non-confidential version of the submission. For comments submitted electronically containing business confidential information, the file name of the business confidential version should begin with the characters “BC.” Any page containing business confidential information must be clearly marked “BUSINESS CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of that page. The corresponding non-confidential version of those comments must be clearly marked “PUBLIC.” The file name of the non-confidential version should begin with the character “P.” Any submissions with file names that do not begin with either a “BC” or a “P” will be assumed to be public and will be made publicly available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Commenters submitting business confidential information are encouraged to scan a hard copy of the non-confidential version to create an image of the file, rather than submitting a digital copy with redactions applied, to avoid inadvertent redaction errors which could enable the public to read business confidential information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical questions, contact Joseph A. Cristofaro, Director, Sensors, Aerospace and Marine Division, Office of National Security Controls, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, at 202-482-2440 or by email: <E T="03">Joseph.Cristofaro@bis.doc.gov.</E> For general questions, contact Regulatory Policy Division, Office of Exporter Services, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce at 202-482-2440 or by email: <E T="03">RPD2@bis.doc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. National Space Council Direction To Review Space Export Controls</HD> On December 20, 2023, the National Space Council convened to discuss U.S. leadership in space. As announced at the Council discussion, the Departments of State and Commerce (hereinafter, State and Commerce, respectively) were subsequently tasked to “conduct a review of space export controls to enable a globally competitive U.S. industrial base while protecting our national security and foreign policy interests.” (see The White House FACT SHEET: Strengthening U.S. International Space Partnerships released on December 20, 2023). In response to the tasking, and pursuant to its authorities under the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) (codified, as amended, at 50 U.S.C. 4801-4852), this IFR is being published concurrently with a Commerce final rule, <E T="03">“Export Administration Regulations: Removal of License Requirements for Certain Spacecraft and Related Items for Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom”</E> (0694-AJ85). This final rule makes important changes to the EAR's controls on remote sensing and space-based logistics, assembly, and servicing spacecraft and related items to better rationalize the controls and facilitate collaboration with three close allies of the United States ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom), as directed by the National Space Council tasking. This IFR builds on the space-related export control revisions for Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom final rule being published concurrently with this IFR by further reducing the export control requirements on certain space-related items when destined to U.S. allies and partners (including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom). BIS welcomes public comment on the changes made in this IFR. In addition to the changes made in this IFR, BIS also welcomes comments in response to this IFR for identifying any additional changes to the EAR's space-related export controls, which commenters believe may enable a globally competitive U.S. space industrial base while protecting U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. This IFR is also being published concurrently with a Commerce proposed rule “ <E T="03">Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls, Including Addition of License Exception Commercial Space Activities (CSA)</E> ” (RIN 0694-AH66) that builds on advanced notices of proposed rulemaking published on March 8, 2019, that are discussed in section I.B. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Past Activities To Review Spacecraft and Related Controls Under Departments of State and Commerce Export Control Authorities</HD> On March 8, 2019, Commerce and State published two advanced notices of proposed rulemaking (ANPRMs) (84 FR 8485 and 84 FR 8486, respectively) seeking input on potential revisions to export controls related to satellites and spacecraft under State's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 CFR parts 120-130) and the EAR. In public comments received in response to those ANPRMs and during subsequent export control outreach events and interagency meetings to review space and related items export controls, industry and interagency representatives proposed several amendments to the EAR to support more robust international partnerships, improve the consistency and clarity of the EAR, and ensure that whenever possible U.S. policies are not putting U.S. industries at a comparative disadvantage. Building on the 2019 ANPRMs, in December 2023, as part of the activities of the National Space Council described under section I.A of this IFR, State and Commerce were tasked with conducting a review of space export controls to enable a globally competitive U.S. industrial base while protecting national security and foreign policy interests. Based on an initial interagency review, and pursuant to its authorities under ECRA, Commerce adopted the regulatory response described in section III of this IFR. In response to the Commerce ANPRM, BIS received 19 public comments. The 19 comments submitted in response to the Commerce ANPRM consisted of comments from 12 major companies in the space industry, four trade associations with large representation from the space industry, two universities well known for their research activities in space-related issues, and one individual. BIS has reviewed these comments and used them to help inform interagency review of export controls on space and related items. In today's IFR, BIS summarizes and responds to comments received in response to the Commerce ANPRM either with regulatory changes or in clarifications made in the preamble of this IFR to address certain comments that do not require regulatory changes. BIS also notes that a large number of the comments received in response to the Commerce ANPRM, which were also submitted to State in response to the State ANPRM, requested that additional defense articles be moved from the U.S Munitions List (USML) to the Commerce Control List (CCL). BIS considered those ITAR specific comments as part of the interagency review process that included State but does not further act upon them here because State has the statutory authority as delegated by the President to the Secretary of State to designate those items as defense articles and defense services for purposes of the ITAR. BIS reviewed all relevant comments submitted in response to the Commerce ANPRM and responds to them directly, as appropriate, in the discussion of the regulatory changes in section III of this IFR. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Overview of This Interim Final Rule</HD> This IFR makes changes to the controls for spacecraft and related items under the EAR. ECRA (codified, as amended, at 50 U.S.C. 4801-4852) provides the legal basis for BIS's principal authorities and serves as the authority under which BIS issues this rule. Section 1753(a) of ECRA (50 U.S.C. 4812) authorizes the regulation of “(1) the export, reexport, and in-country transfer of items subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, whether by United States persons or by foreign persons.” The changes being made in this IFR are needed for the regulation of exports, reexports, and transfers (in-country) of spacecraft and related items subje ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 105k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━