Industry lobbies to protect Commerce space office at risk of cuts

WASHINGTON — A collection of industry groups that represent over 450 companies is urging lawmakers to protect the Commerce Department’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC), as the Trump administration eyes cuts to the organization.

The letter, signed by organizations like the Aerospace Industries Association and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, calls for Congress to fund OSC at current levels for the upcoming fiscal 2026 budget, or roughly $65 million. Following DOGE-driven layoffs that decimated OSC’s workforce, the administration’s FY26 proposal would shrink the office’s budget down to just $10 million, according to budget documents previously released by the Commerce Department [PDF].

One key program would face the axe under the administration’s moves to slash the size of the federal government: the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), a nascent effort headed by OSC that would see the Commerce Department take over the role of managing civil satellite traffic from the Pentagon. The administration is proposing to eliminate funding for the program in FY26, the documents say. 

“Helping the US space industry operate safely in an increasingly congested space domain ensures space-based services like broadband internet and weather forecasting are available to the American people. Likewise, a safe space operating environment is vital for continuity of national security space missions such as early warning of missile attacks on deployed U.S. military forces,” reads the letter, addressed to lawmakers on the commerce subcommittees under the House and Senate appropriations committee.

“Without funding for space traffic coordination, US commercial and government satellite operators would face greater risks — putting critical missions in harm’s way, raising the cost of doing business, and potentially driving US industry to relocate overseas,” the missive warns. 

OSC, which is nested in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration division of the Commerce Department and is broadly tasked with fostering economic growth in the space domain, has so far faced a bumpy road under the Trump administration. In March, for example, key officials were abruptly dismissed amid mass DOGE-inspired firings only to be brought back following outcry from industry. 

Ironically, OSC was spearheading the TraCSS program as the result of an instruction issued in 2018 under the first Trump administration known as Space Policy Directive-3. After years of effort, an initial version of TraCSS was rolled out in September 2024 that provided collision warnings to a set of beta users. 

But the TraCSS program can be canceled, the administration says in the budget documents, because “private industry has proven that they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators with SSA [space situational awareness] data and STM [space traffic management] services using the releasable portion of the DOD catalog.” Confirming that the “intent” of Space Policy Directive-3 has been “satisfied,” the documents say the Commerce Department “will continue to monitor the use of SSA services by civil operators to determine whether additional policies are warranted to ensure space remains a safe domain to operate.”

Industry leaders who wrote to lawmakers did not seem convinced the arrangement is in the US’s best interest. A “failure to fund OSC adequately risks reverting the space traffic coordination mission to the Department of Defense despite longstanding US policy favoring civil oversight,” the authors of the letter warn. “Keeping space traffic coordination within the Department of Commerce preserves military resources for core defense missions and prevents the conflation of space safety with military control.” 

Amid stiff competition across domains and around the world, “OSC is an invaluable partner to the U.S. space industry,” the letter says, which adds that “sufficient funding” for the office in FY26 “will allow OSC to continue supporting the competitiveness of the US space industry as both the market landscape and orbital environment become increasingly crowded.” It’s unclear what lawmakers may decide, though they could reject the administration’s proposed cuts and ultimately fund OSC to continue the TraCSS mission. 

Despite its uncertain fate, TraCSS has also been moving ahead. On June 11, the program awarded multiple contracts totaling $10.1 million for a pathfinder program that seeks to solve a current “blind spot” in space traffic management, where operators have “uncertain or incomplete positional data on newly deployed satellites” immediately following a launch.