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takyon writes:

During a recent SpaceX launch for Iridium, the live coverage of the mission was cut off early, with the host pointing to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) restrictions on launches that don't obtain a license. While SpaceX may have been breaking the law on previous missions that it had broadcasted without obtaining a license, it appears that nobody at NOAA realized until the high-profile maiden launch of Falcon Heavy. However, there is also a dispute over whether NOAA approached SpaceX about the issue or SpaceX voluntarily asked for a license:

NOAA had recently told the company to get a license for the cameras on the rocket, SpaceX said after the launch. The reason? The cameras take video of the Earth from orbit, and NOAA regulates imagery of Earth taken from space, thanks to a 26-year-old law. However, this was the first time SpaceX needed to get a license for its cameras. SpaceX filed a license application just four days before the launch, but NOAA couldn't approve the use of the cameras in time. (Reviews can take up to 120 days, NOAA says.) And so there was a blackout when the Falcon 9 reached orbit.

What changed? SpaceX and other rocket companies have been livestreaming their launches from orbit for years now, and practically all show Earth in the background. Well, it's possible that SpaceX may be in NOAA's crosshairs because of the company's recent Falcon Heavy launch and famous Starman livestream. In February, SpaceX aired live footage of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Tesla in space for hours, with Earth prominently featured in the background. It got massive amounts of attention — and that may have triggered NOAA to reach out to SpaceX, requiring the company to get a license for its cameras, according to a report from SpacePolicyOnline.com.

[...] There's still some confusion around the livestream saga, though. NOAA claims that SpaceX was the one to reach out to the agency about getting a license, not the other way around. "It was SpaceX that came to us," Tahara Dawkins, the director of NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Office said at a meeting Tuesday, according to Space News. "It wasn't NOAA that went out to them and said, 'Hey, stop, you're going to need a license.'" SpaceX disagrees. A company spokesperson, speaking on background, says it only filed an application after NOAA said the cameras qualified as a "remote sensing space system" and needed a license. (We asked NOAA for further clarification and will update the story if we hear back.)

Plus, neither NOAA nor SpaceX will admit that the Falcon Heavy launch was what started this chain of events, but Weeden argues it's the likeliest catalyst. "Starman probably attracted so much attention that someone at NOAA or someone at SpaceX realized they may have crossed that threshold to start thinking about that license," he says. When asked during Tuesday's meeting if SpaceX had broken the law with its past broadcasts from space, NOAA's Dawkins said "she would not know without looking specifically at what took place," according to SpacePolicyOnline.com.

SpaceX says it doesn't need to obtain a license for NASA missions, such as the recent CRS-14 mission to the International Space Station. SpaceNews notes that the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act would allow the Secretary of Commerce to waive licensing of some remote sensing systems.

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