Responding to industry complaints that federal rules increasingly hamper private ventures in space, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has emerged as the deregulation czar of the heavens.

A senior White House policy group on Wednesday agreed to tap his agency to be the prime catalyst for loosening federal controls over activities ranging from rocket launches to satellite licensing to asteroid mining. To promote a budding commercial space industry that created some 1,700 new companies around the globe last year—with roughly half...