Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Whitaker announced that he will resign on January 20. The resignation comes as he has accused SpaceX of violating FAA regulations.
“The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public,” Whitaker said in a memo to employees, as reported by the Associated Press. “This has been the best and most challenging job of my career, and I wanted you to hear directly from me that my tenure will come to a close on January 20, 2025.”
The FAA’s assistant administrator for finance and management, Mark House, will take over.
The agency said in September that it proposed a $633,009 penalty against SpaceX for “allegedly failing to follow its license requirements during two launches in 2023, in accordance with statutorily-set civil penalty guidelines.”
“Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” FAA Chief Counsel Marc Nichols said at the time. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.”
SpaceX challenged the fines imposed on it, writing to members of Congress it was “highly irregular, and perhaps unprecedented, for a Chief Counsel to be quoted on an enforcement matter,” the letter adds. “SpaceX forcefully rejects the FAA’s assertion that it violated any regulations.”
SpaceX asserted that it is “committed to safety in all operations. With respect to these matters, it is notable that in each instance, SpaceX provided AST [the Office of Commercial Space Transportation] with sufficient notice of these relatively minor license updates, which had no bearing on public safety.”
