The FCC 5-year rule: what a CubeSat operator must demonstrate

The FCC 5-year rule requires a satellite that ends its mission in low Earth orbit, and plans to dispose of itself by uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry, to complete that re-entry as soon as practicable and no later than five years after the end of the mission. The rule is in FCC 22-74, the Second Report and Order in the “Mitigation of Orbital Debris in the New Space Age” proceeding, adopted on 29 September 2022. It replaced the 25-year guideline that NASA proposed in the 1990s and that the IADC and the US Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices later adopted.

This article explains what the rule requires, who it covers, what the orbital debris mitigation plan in a licence application must show, how orbital lifetime is estimated, and where a tracked re-entry forecast fits once the satellite is in orbit. It is written for the people who file these applications: CubeSat teams at universities and small operators without a flight-dynamics group. It is not legal advice.

What the rule says

The requirement applies to “space stations ending their mission in, or passing through, the LEO region below 2000 km altitude and planning disposal through uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry” (FCC 22-74, paragraph 18). Such a satellite must complete disposal “as soon as practicable following end of mission, and no later than five years after the end of the mission.” An elliptical orbit with a perigee in LEO counts as passing through the LEO region.

“End of mission” has a specific definition. For a satellite that can perform collision avoidance manoeuvres, the mission ends when it can no longer perform them. For a satellite without collision avoidance capability, which describes most CubeSats, the mission ends when the satellite has completed its primary mission: the science, the communications service, the imaging campaign. The five-year clock starts there, not at launch.

The FCC did not prescribe a method of disposal. The rule is performance-based: an operator may use propulsion, a drag device, or simply an orbit low enough that atmospheric drag brings the satellite down in time. What the operator has to demonstrate is the outcome.

Who the rule covers

The rule covers every category of FCC satellite authorisation. Paragraph 18 of the order lists them: satellites licensed under Part 25, non-US-licensed satellites seeking access to the US market under 47 CFR 25.137, small satellites licensed under the streamlined process in 47 CFR 25.122, experimental satellites authorised under Part 5 (47 CFR 5.64), and amateur satellites authorised under Part 97 (47 CFR 97.207).

The streamlined small-satellite process has its own, tighter condition. To qualify for it, an applicant must certify that the planned total in-orbit lifetime of each satellite is six years or less (47 CFR 25.122(c)(2)). A CubeSat with a twelve-month mission therefore has to show a post-mission orbital lifetime of five years at most to satisfy the disposal rule, and a total lifetime of six years at most to keep the streamlined process.

Grandfathering is by launch date. Satellites already in orbit on 29 September 2022 are exempt. Satellites that were already authorised but not yet launched had a two-year transition. Any satellite launched after 29 September 2024 must comply, whether it is newly licensed or was authorised before the rule (paragraph 22).

What the mitigation plan must show

An FCC application for a satellite must include an orbital debris mitigation disclosure under 47 CFR 25.114(d)(14), with matching provisions for experimental and amateur applications. The disclosure is a set of statements: that the operator has assessed and limited debris released during normal operations, the probability of collision with small and large objects, and the probability of accidental explosion, plus a description of the post-mission disposal plan, including any fuel reserved for it.

Since the 2020 Report and Order, an applicant who plans disposal by atmospheric re-entry must also specify the planned time period for post-mission disposal. Under FCC 22-74 that period must be five years or less from end of mission. The number in the application is the orbital lifetime estimate, and it is the number this article is about.

Many operators present these statements in the form of an Orbital Debris Assessment Report (ODAR), the document format NASA defines in NASA-STD-8719.14 for its own missions. NASA-sponsored CubeSat launches ask for one, and the same report commonly serves as the FCC disclosure. The FCC does not require the NASA format, but the content it asks for overlaps almost completely.

How orbital lifetime is estimated before launch

Before launch, orbital lifetime is a model output, not a measurement. The estimate takes the planned initial orbit (apogee, perigee, inclination), the satellite’s area-to-mass ratio in its expected attitude, and a projection of solar activity over the coming years, and integrates the orbit under atmospheric drag until it reaches the surface.

The standard tool for this is NASA’s Debris Assessment Software (DAS), the utility NASA maintains to verify compliance with NASA-STD-8719.14. DAS computes the post-mission orbital lifetime from those inputs, using a solar flux table that NASA updates quarterly. The current version at the time of writing is DAS 3.2.7, released in April 2026, distributed through the NASA Software Catalog under a user agreement. Other tools exist, including ESA’s DRAMA suite and CNES’s STELA, and commercial packages such as the STK Lifetime tool.

Two of the three inputs are uncertain by nature. The area-to-mass ratio depends on how the satellite tumbles, which is rarely known before flight. Solar activity drives upper-atmosphere density, and the eleven-year solar cycle is forecast, not known; the 2019 Standard Practices ask operators to use “conservative projections for solar activity” for this reason. A pre-launch lifetime estimate is therefore a defensible bound for a licence application, and it is the right tool for that job. It is not a re-entry date.

Where a tracked forecast fits after launch

After launch, the satellite is a tracked object with a NORAD catalogue number, and the public tracking record replaces the assumptions. The 18th Space Defense Squadron publishes general-perturbations orbital elements, as TLE or OMM, through Space-Track and CelesTrak, typically several times a day for a low object. Each element set carries the observed orbit and a drag term, so the satellite’s actual ballistic coefficient and the actual atmosphere it is flying through show up in the data.

This is what Descent does with that record. An operator adds the satellite by NORAD ID; Descent pulls new TLEs every hour, keeps a five-year backfill, and re-predicts the remaining orbital lifetime, the re-entry date, whenever the orbit changes. The prediction engine models space weather rather than a drag-only scenario. Every prediction is appended to a history, with the TLE inputs, fetch time, and engine version stored alongside it, so a date quoted in a post-mission disposal record or a paper can be traced to the data it came from.

Two documents in the mission’s life draw on this. During operations, the tracked re-entry date shows whether the satellite is on course to meet the five-year deadline, and how that date moves as the solar cycle and the satellite’s attitude behave differently from the pre-launch assumptions. After re-entry, a dated post-mission report (predicted versus actual re-entry, the full TLE record, the engine version) closes the disposal record. Descent provides the full prediction history free for satellites that have already re-entered.

A short checklist

• Identify the end-of-mission point as the FCC defines it: loss of collision avoidance capability, or completion of the primary mission for a satellite without it.
• Estimate post-mission orbital lifetime with DAS or an equivalent tool, using the planned orbit, a conservative area-to-mass ratio, and a conservative solar activity projection. Show that it is five years or less; six years total if you are using the streamlined small-satellite process.
• File the orbital debris mitigation disclosure under 47 CFR 25.114(d)(14) or its Part 5 or Part 97 equivalent, stating the planned disposal time period. An ODAR in the NASA-STD-8719.14 format is a common way to present it.
• After launch, track the satellite’s actual orbital decay against the estimate. Keep the record.
• After re-entry, keep a dated post-mission record of predicted versus actual re-entry as the closing evidence.

Sources

• FCC 22-74, Second Report and Order, “Mitigation of Orbital Debris in the New Space Age”, IB Docket Nos. 22-271 and 18-313, adopted 29 September 2022: docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-74A1.pdf
• 47 CFR 25.114(d)(14), orbital debris mitigation disclosure: ecfr.gov
• 47 CFR 25.122, streamlined small satellite process: ecfr.gov
• US Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices, November 2019 update: orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov
• NASA Debris Assessment Software: orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov
• NASA-STD-8719.14, Process for Limiting Orbital Debris: standards.nasa.gov