Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls, Including Addition of License Exception Commercial Space Activities (CSA)

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Bureau of Industry and Security</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Parts 740 and 774</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241004-0265]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0694-AH66</RIN> <SUBJECT>Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls, Including Addition of License Exception Commercial Space Activities (CSA)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this proposed rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) proposes changes to controls for spacecraft and related items under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) that would conform to proposed changes to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) related to U.S. Munitions List (USML) Categories IV and XV. This rule also proposes the addition of a new license exception for certain Commercial Space Activities (CSA). This proposed rule is published alongside the Department of State proposed rule, “International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR): U.S. Munitions List Categories IV and XV” (1400-AE73), which includes proposed changes for certain space-related defense articles and related controls. These proposed rules are intended to 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> 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">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> The <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> ID for this rule is: BIS-2018-0029. Please refer to RIN 0694-AH66 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 at: <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. 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 of 2018 (ECRA) (codified, as amended, at 50 U.S.C. 4801-4852), BIS is publishing concurrently with this proposed rule, the 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). That 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 Space Council tasking. In addition, in response to the tasking, BIS is also publishing concurrently with this proposed rule a Commerce interim final rule, <E T="03">“Export Administration Regulations: Revisions to Space-Related Export Controls”</E> (0694-AJ87) and that Commerce final rule that will build on the space-related export control revisions for Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom 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). This proposed rule builds on those two rules, to propose EAR changes that would conform to proposed changes to the ITAR (22 CFR parts 120-130), including those related to USML Categories IV and XV. This rule also proposes the addition of a new EAR License Exception for certain Commercial Space Activities (CSA). This proposed rule is published concurrently with the Department of State proposed rule, “International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR): U.S. Munitions List Categories IV and XV” (1400-AE73), which proposes changes to controls under the ITAR for certain space-related defense articles and related controls in response to the same tasking. Although the two rules are complementary and published concurrently, they are not published in conjunction as joint rules. These proposed changes are intended to better enable a globally competitive U.S. space industrial base while continuing to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. BIS welcomes public comment on the impact of the changes proposed in this rule, as well as any additional changes to the EAR's space-related export controls that could enable a globally competitive U.S. space industrial base while protecting U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. In 2023-2024, BIS, in coordination with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducted a survey and assessment of organizations affiliated with NASA, NOAA, and the broader U.S. Civil Space Industrial Base (CSIB). The resulting data included respondents' aggregated views on current export control regulations, as well as suggestions for revisions, and has been broadly used to inform this proposed rule. <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, the Department of Commerce (Commerce) and the Department of State (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 the ITAR (22 CFR parts 120-130) and EAR (15 CFR parts 730-774). 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 and as part of its activities described under section I.A of this proposed rule, the National Space Council tasked State and Commerce in December 2023 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 that initial interagency review, and pursuant to its authorities under ECRA, Commerce proposes the regulatory changes described in section II of this proposed rule. 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 summarizes those comments into 22 topics, which BIS addresses under section I.C. BIS has reviewed these comments and used them to help inform interagency review of export controls on space and related items. In this proposed rule, BIS summarizes and responds to these 22 topics received in response to the Commerce ANPRM with either regulatory changes or in c ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 114k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━