Barcelona, Spain – 02.03.2026: Space X logo is seen on display, a space exploration company owned by Elon Musk. Credit: davide bonaldo via Shutterstock SpaceX and the commercial space industry want the FCC to abolish the third-party council that coordinates the radio spectrum used by rocket launches and aircraft flight testing, replacing it with an unspecified system of self-coordination. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX and GE Healthcare have objected, while the European Commission is moving the other way and reserving two-thirds of its own satellite band for European operators. SpaceX wants the American regulator to abolish the body that stops rocket launches interfering with everyone else’s radio frequencies.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX and GE Healthcare have all objected. The justification is a plan SpaceX’s own stock market filing says may never work. The petition before the Federal Communications Commission would scrap the Aerospace and Flight Test Radio Coordinating Council and leave users of the bands to devise their own system of self-coordination, as Bloomberg reported. SpaceX’s filings describe the objectors as “legacy contractors attempting to maintain a veto over more advanced competitors“.
Every launch needs spectrum to steer a rocket into orbit, and operators currently book weeks ahead to avoid interference. Elon Musk wants 10,000 launches a year. What are they all for? Orbital data centres, which SpaceX’s own filing warns involve unproven technologies and may not reach commercial viability.
Musk called space-based artificial intelligence a no-brainer at Davos three months before that document was written. The company is valued at about $2T, partly on the promise. The objectors are not only in aerospace. GE Healthcare told the commission it “should not elevate space launch operator convenience over the reliability of critical safety-of-life operations“, by which it means the wireless sensors that monitor patients in hospital.
Boeing said self-coordination cannot work when much of what it tests cannot be described in public. A wireless microphone trade group warned about live sport. Europe is moving in the other direction entirely. The Commission plans to ringfence two-thirds of the EU’s 2 GHz mobile-satellite band for European operators, leaving Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper to bid for the remaining third.
That is the band the IRIS2 consortium of SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat would use, and the current licences expire in May 2027. One regulator is being asked to remove the referee. The other is reserving the pitch. SpaceX and three other American firms skipped Macron’s space summit in September after pressure from the White House.
The EU Space Act at the centre of that row would make any operator serving European users seek prior authorisation and appoint a representative here. Scale is the argument on both sides. SpaceX is building a $100B spaceport in Louisiana designed for thousands of launches a year. Ariane 6 manages nine or ten.
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