Document type: Checklist Practice area: Technology — Aerospace Jurisdiction: United States (federal) and international Last reviewed: 5 September 2026

Part 1 — Export control (FIRST, before anything else)

Violations are criminal under 22 U.S.C. § 2778 and occur before anyone thinks about them.

Classification:

  • Every subsystem classified: ITAR / United States Munitions List, EAR / Commerce Control List (spacecraft items concentrated in the 500 series at 15 C.F.R. Part 774), or uncontrolled.
  • Item-by-item, not categorical — the 2014 reform moved many commercial satellites and components off the Munitions List.
  • Classification register maintained, with the basis and date for each determination, updated as the design changes.

Access control:

  • Deemed export audit: who can read controlled technical data, by nationality, in every repository, drive, wiki, and ticketing system. Release to a foreign national inside the United States is an export to that person's country.
  • Foreign suppliers identified; authorization (TAA or EAR equivalent) obtained before the engineering conversation.
  • Foreign launch provider technical exchange authorized.
  • Foreign ground station equipment and data exports authorized.
  • Foreign investors and board members with data access analyzed.

Program:

  • Technology control plan written.
  • Empowered official appointed.
  • Engineering organization trained; training records kept.
  • Historical violations found? Voluntary disclosure evaluated promptly — self-reporting and remediation ordinarily resolves without penalty; discovery by an investigation does not.

Part 2 — Build the schedule backwards from launch

  • One-page regulatory schedule keyed to L-minus dates, with an owner per workstream.
  • Standing weekly meeting including engineering — most regulatory requirements here are engineering requirements.
L-19  Export program; classification register complete
L-18  FCC application filed          ← the long pole
L-17  Remote sensing application filed (if imaging Earth)
L-15  ** DESIGN FREEZE — after the debris analysis **
L-14  Launch services agreement executed
L-12  ITU coordination in parallel
L-10  Earth station applications (each site separately)
L-8   Insurance placed
L-6   Payload review data to launch provider
L-3   Conjunction assessment arrangements
L-0   Launch
  • Regulatory status sheet maintained monthly — it serves the board, investors, acquirers, and the insurance broker.

Part 3 — Communications authorization

47 U.S.C. § 301 prohibits transmission without a license; § 307 is the licensing authority and § 309 the procedure, including public notice and petition to deny. Rules at 47 C.F.R. Part 25.

  • Streamlined small satellite path evaluated — qualifying? (Many constellations do not.) Determined early, because it changes the schedule by months.
  • Frequency selection supported by a coordination analysis, not by what the radio vendor supports.
  • Interference analysis against terrestrial and satellite incumbents.
  • Orbital parameters and mission profile.
  • Legal, technical, and financial qualifications.
  • Specialist communications counsel engaged — not general corporate counsel.
  • Filed before the design freezes.

International:

  • ITU coordination proceeding in parallel, filed through the FCC.
  • Coordination obligations with other administrations identified.
  • Bringing-into-use deadlines tracked against the launch schedule — an assignment not brought into use lapses.

Part 4 — Orbital debris (do this before the design freeze)

  • No operational debris released — no lens caps, separation hardware, or deliberate breakups.
  • Collision risk assessed at deployment and across the mission.
  • Maneuverability: can the spacecraft maneuver, with what propulsion, and how are conjunction warnings handled?
  • Post-mission disposal against a five-year expectation in low Earth orbit — materially tighter than the previous twenty-five-year guideline.
  • Casualty risk on reentry for surviving components.
  • Disposal reliability, multiplied across every satellite in the constellation.
  • Space situational awareness arrangements: conjunction data sources, screening thresholds, maneuver decision process, and how another operator reaches you at 3 a.m.
  • Analysis run at concept, not at critical design review. The five-year rule sets a relationship between altitude, ballistic coefficient, and whether a deorbit device or propulsion is carried.
  • Trade study documented if altitude, propulsion, or a drag device changed as a result.

Part 5 — Remote sensing (if anything points at Earth)

License required under 51 U.S.C. § 60121; conditions of operation at § 60122; regulations at 15 C.F.R. Part 960.

  • Tiering assessed — is the data substantially available from other sources, domestic or foreign?
  • Availability analysis prepared by us, identifying comparable systems with capabilities and availability. (An applicant who documents this is in a far better position than one who asserts it.)
  • Conditions in the granted license read carefully.
  • Section 60122 understood: operation consistent with national security concerns and the foreign policy and international obligations of the United States — the basis for limits on collection or dissemination.
  • License conditions read into customer agreements before the sales team commits. Data contracts cannot promise what the license does not permit.
  • Novel modalities (radar, very high resolution, non-Earth imaging) recognized as schedule drivers, not formalities.

Part 6 — Launch provider relationship

  • Understood: the launch provider holds the license, not us. 51 U.S.C. § 50904 makes unlicensed launch unlawful; § 50905 governs applications; the framework is 14 C.F.R. Part 450.
  • Payload review anticipated — does another agency license our payload, or does it stand alone? (A payload no agency licenses meets the mission authorization gap.)
  • Payload review data package prepared on schedule.
  • Provider's license diligenced: status, scope, coverage of our orbit and trajectory.
  • Contract addresses modification, suspension, or revocation of the provider's license under § 50908.
  • Schedule risk allocated: delay accommodation, extended-delay walk-away, manifest priority on a rideshare, primary payload slip.
  • Integration technical exchange planned, with export authorizations identified in advance.

Part 7 — The cross-waiver and financial responsibility

  • Board briefed, in writing, early: 51 U.S.C. § 50914 requires a reciprocal waiver of claims. If the rocket fails, we have no claim against the provider. Not capped — none.
  • Spacecraft insured, or the loss consciously accepted. For a constellation this is a portfolio decision.
  • Reflight guarantee or launch credit negotiated: trigger, timeline, manifest priority, and what happens if the provider cannot reflight within a defined period. This is the actual remedy.
  • Orbit insertion accuracy treated as a separate failure mode with its own remedy.
  • Cross-waiver flowed down into our subcontracts and customer agreements — a subcontractor who has not waived creates a problem the provider will look to us to solve.

The three tiers, understood:

  • Tier 1 — licensee insurance for maximum probable loss from third-party claims and United States Government property claims, determined per mission (§ 50914).
  • Tier 2 — government payment of successful claims above that, subject to appropriation and a statutory ceiling (§ 50915).
  • Tier 3 — liability returns to the licensee above the ceiling.

Part 8 — Insurance

  • Pre-launch coverage: delivery through launch, including transport and integration.
  • Launch coverage: ignition through a defined point.
  • In-orbit coverage.
  • Third-party liability; whether the provider's policy names us.
  • Collision liability considered — the international framework imposes fault-based liability for damage in space, so a collision produces a fault inquiry.
  • Conjunction assessment practices and maneuver decision records maintained as evidence for that inquiry.
  • Specialist space insurance broker engaged early; underwriter requirements obtained before design and operational decisions lock.

Part 9 — Ground segment

  • Every earth station separately authorized — the satellite license does not cover them.
  • Per-site frequency coordination, interference analysis, and antenna characteristics.
  • Foreign sites: that country's authorization, through a local entity or partner, on that country's timeline.
  • Equipment and technical data exports for foreign sites authorized.
  • Ground-station-as-a-service providers verified — what do they actually hold, in which countries, for which bands? Put it in the contract.
  • Nine to twelve months budgeted for a global network. Started earlier than feels necessary.

Part 10 — Customer agreements

  • License conditions read into every contract; right reserved to comply with them; consequences allocated if a condition prevents delivery.
  • Deliverable defined precisely: resolution, revisit, latency, tasking priority, coverage, quality thresholds, and the remedy for a miss.
  • Derived products, sublicensing, and post-termination rights in previously delivered data.
  • Export analysis run on data and imagery delivered to foreign customers, before the sales team commits.

Part 11 — Government customers

  • Data rights category understood — turns largely on who funded development.
  • Contemporaneous records of private-expense development maintained — the question is asked years later and the burden is ours.
  • Deliverables marked correctly and consistently; unmarked or wrongly marked data can lose protection.
  • Federally funded patent obligations on the patent docket: disclosure, election-of-title deadlines, government license, United States manufacturing preference.
  • Other transaction agreements recognized as negotiated instruments with no protective default.
  • Cost accounting, business systems, and audit obligations assessed against thresholds.
  • Facility and personnel clearances started early.
  • Foreign ownership, control, or influence assessed; foreign investment review considered for critical technologies.
  • Protest exposure understood in both directions, with short deadlines.

Part 12 — Human spaceflight (if people are aboard)

  • Current status of the statutory limitation on regulating spaceflight participant safety confirmed — it is a live legislative question.
  • Written risk disclosure to each participant, including the vehicle type's safety record.
  • Written statement that the United States Government has not certified the vehicle as safe for carrying crew or participants.
  • Written informed consent obtained.
  • Crew qualification and training requirements met.
  • Public safety measures implemented (never within the learning-period restraint).
  • Waiver enforceability analyzed by state; choice of law and forum considered; state spaceflight liability statutes checked.
  • Consent document written to be understood, not merely to be defensible; briefing recorded; briefers trained.
  • Medical screening, training, and selection criteria treated as legal documents.

Part 13 — Continuing obligations

  • Annual and periodic reports calendared.
  • Modification applications for any change to orbital parameters, frequencies, or spacecraft characteristics — "any change" is broader than operators assume.
  • License renewals calendared.
  • Conjunction assessment and coordination running, with documented thresholds and decision process.
  • Anomaly and failure reporting process.
  • Debris mitigation compliance against the licensed plan.
  • Deorbit confirmation at end of life.
  • Export program maintained as design and staff change.
  • License conditions visible to engineering and operations — the most common post-launch failure is an operational change made by people who never read the license.
  • Regulatory program manager staffed — this is a continuous function, not a launch-phase project.

Part 14 — Activities no statute clearly covers

In-orbit servicing, debris removal, commercial stations, lunar operations, point-to-point suborbital transport.

  • Agencies engaged early and jointly — FAA, FCC, and Commerce components in the same room, with a written mission description and our own analysis of applicable authorities.
  • Expectation set: regulation by license condition rather than by rule — so conditions are negotiable and worth negotiating carefully.
  • Treaty analysis done by us: Outer Space Treaty authorization and continuing supervision of non-governmental activities; Liability Convention absolute liability on the surface and fault-based liability in space; registration obligations; 51 U.S.C. § 50919 on the relationship to international obligations.
  • Where another State's registered object is involved (debris removal), the jurisdiction-and-control problem addressed.
  • Point-to-point suborbital: boundary with aviation certification under 49 U.S.C. § 44701 analyzed.
  • Budget and plan for the framework changing — legislation and rulemaking are in motion.

Related documents

This checklist is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.