Corporate, transactional, and regulatory counsel for the space economy, covering launch and supply contracts, spectrum and licensing, export controls, and financing, structured for an industry that crosses borders by design.
In orbit the license comes before the hardware. An NGSO licensee must launch and operate half of its authorized constellation within six years of its FCC grant and the rest within nine, on a surety bond that escalates toward $5 million until the milestones are met, and an ITU frequency assignment lapses if it is not brought into use within seven years of its filing. Capital is raised against those dates.
Export control runs through everything else. Spacecraft and launch vehicles sit on the US Munitions List or under the EAR's 9x515 entries, a manufacturer of the former must register with the State Department whether or not it ever exports, and a drawing shown to an engineer on a work visa in Illinois is an export that needs a license.
We act for operators, manufacturers, and the investors behind them, and we bring in registered trade-controls and communications counsel for the filings that require them. The job is writing the license conditions and the export posture into the structure and the financing before the term sheet, because the lenders will read them first.
Drafting and negotiating launch services, payload, hosted-payload, and supply contracts, allocating the risk of delay, failure, and re-flight that defines space procurement, and aligning liability and insurance with the realities of the mission.
Advising on the commercial and corporate side of spectrum rights, orbital authorizations, and operating licenses: how they are acquired, conditioned, valued in a deal, and protected. Communications regulatory counsel are coordinated for filings before the relevant authorities.
Building ITAR and EAR posture into deal structure, supply chains, technology transfers, and the employment of foreign nationals, and coordinating with registered trade-controls counsel on the classification and licensing questions that call for them.
Structuring venture and growth rounds, project and asset financing, and strategic transactions for capital-intensive businesses, with security over high-value assets, milestone and revenue terms, and the governance that lets a capital stack hold under pressure.
Acquisitions, consortium and joint-venture arrangements, and partnerships across the value chain, with diligence tuned to licensing, export, and IP exposure and the cross-border structuring these alliances almost always require.
Protecting and licensing the technology, software, and earth-observation data a venture generates, plus the distribution, ground-station, and customer agreements that turn an asset in orbit into a commercial business.
The FAA must decide a launch license application within 180 days, but the clock starts only when an application is accepted as complete, and applications are returned as incomplete more often than they are denied. Since 2021 one Part 450 license can cover a vehicle family across several sites.
The EAR excuses a foreign-made item whose controlled US content falls below a de minimis share, 25 percent for most destinations. ITAR has no threshold, so a foreign-built satellite carrying one ITAR component is ITAR-controlled in its entirety. That rule created the ITAR-free spacecraft market and shapes our supply-chain diligence.
Under the Outer Space Treaty a state answers internationally for its nationals' activities in space and must authorize and supervise them; under the 1972 Liability Convention a launching state is absolutely liable for damage on the ground. Every license condition a venture meets is a government passing those obligations down.
An FCC license is not collateral. The Commission allows a lender a security interest only in the proceeds of its sale, and any transfer of control, foreclosure included, needs its consent under Section 310(d). Financings are built around that gap, with satellites, contracts, and equity standing in for the asset.
Federal rules require a launch licensee, its contractors, and its customers to waive claims against one another for their own losses, so a satellite lost on ascent is the owner's loss unless insured. The licensee carries third-party cover up to the FAA's maximum probable loss, capped by statute at $500 million.
Trade-controls licensing, communications filings, and foreign-law questions often require an admission or a practice we do not keep in-house, so we coordinate locally admitted counsel and counsel in those fields, and each filing is handled by the right hands.
Before a term sheet moves, we map the regulatory perimeter: which agency licenses the mission, where ITAR ends and EAR begins, and how foreign capital on the cap table will read to national-security reviewers. The corporate structure is drawn to survive that map.
Filings for spectrum, earth stations, launch, and remote-sensing authorizations run in parallel with coordination among operators already occupying the orbit. Milestone conditions attached to the license become the company's real operating covenants, and we calendar them like debt maturities.
The launch services agreement is negotiated around the industry's peculiar physics of liability: reciprocal cross-waivers among launch participants, government-mandated insurance, and re-flight versus refund remedies when a manifest slips or a vehicle fails.
Financing closes against licensed spectrum and contracted launch slots rather than delivered hardware, so covenants, security packages, and any CFIUS-sensitive investor terms are built around license milestones. Counsel stays on through deployment, when service agreements begin to bear revenue.
In orbit, the license is the asset, and the satellite is how you keep it.
Corporate and transactional work for operators, manufacturers, and the investors behind them: the financing rounds and the security packages, the launch and supply agreements with their cross-waivers and re-flight terms, and the acquisitions and joint ventures that follow. On the regulatory side we advise on how a license, a spectrum filing, or an export classification is valued, conditioned, and protected in a deal, and we bring in communications counsel for FCC and ITU filings and registered trade-controls counsel for ITAR and EAR licensing. The engagement letter says which filings we make and which we coordinate.
On the commercial side, yes, with communications regulatory counsel coordinated for the filings themselves. The mechanics a founder should know: a GSO satellite is licensed first come, first served, while NGSO systems are licensed in processing rounds that open and close on the FCC's timetable; a foreign-licensed satellite needs a grant of US market access before it may serve US customers; and the ITU seven-year bring-into-use deadline runs from the filing date whether or not the satellite is built. We negotiate the license conditions into the financing and the purchase agreement, so that a milestone extension sought from the Commission is also a cure period under the loan.
From the first hire. Technical data released to a foreign-national employee in the United States is a deemed export, so an engineering team with visa holders needs licenses or a hiring policy before the first drawing is shared. Sharing data with a foreign launch provider or investor requires a Technical Assistance Agreement approved by the State Department, which takes months. Where it is unclear whether an item is ITAR or EAR, a commodity jurisdiction request settles it, and the answer changes the buyer universe and the price in a sale. We build these timelines into the deal and work with registered trade-controls counsel on the filings.
Yes. The organizing concept is the launching state: the country that launches, procures the launch, or lends its territory or facility is liable under the 1972 Liability Convention for what goes up, and each of them will license and insure the venture accordingly. A US company launching from a foreign site, or a UK operator licensed under the Space Industry Act 2018, may answer to two regulators for one mission. We structure the operating entity, the asset-owning entity, and the licensee so those obligations land where they are meant to, and we work with locally admitted counsel, including through our London and Dubai partner firms, for the national filings.
Yes. Space financings close against licenses and contracts rather than delivered hardware, so the documents differ from a software round in three places. Tranches are tied to license milestones and launch dates, with cure periods that match the extension the regulator will realistically grant. Launch and in-orbit insurance proceeds are assigned to the lenders, and the satellite purchase agreement states whether title passes at shipment or at in-orbit acceptance, which decides who bears the launch. A foreign investor taking equity in a company that makes ITAR-controlled items may trigger a mandatory CFIUS declaration before closing. Our funds and securities colleagues handle the offering side.
Spacetech and satellite is a sector focus, served by the firm's corporate, M&A, regulatory, and private-capital capabilities. There is no stand-alone department. The legal work, from contracts and licensing strategy to export-control posture, financing, and disputes, is the same core capability brought to the specific context of the space economy, with locally admitted counsel and counsel in the relevant regulatory fields coordinated where a matter requires it.
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Explore →Reviewed by Jonathan D. Herpy, Sr., Senior Partner · Last updated October 2026 · Educational overview · Not legal advice
One partner is accountable for the whole matter, and you have that partner's direct line. Chicago, London, and Dubai work to the same standard.