Your remote pilot certificate is issued once and, unlike your currency, never expires — but a short list of housekeeping rules keeps it valid. Getting it starts with § 107.63: you apply in the form and manner the FAA accepts, submitting either the airman knowledge test report from the exam or, on the Part 61 route, the § 107.74 training completion certificate. Under § 107.64 the FAA first issues a temporary remote pilot certificate, valid for up to 120 calendar days, and then the permanent certificate once it finds you qualified — so the temporary document lets you fly while the permanent one is processed.

Two housekeeping duties under § 107.77 keep the certificate accurate once you hold it. A change of name means sending in your certificate together with a document that verifies the change — a marriage license, a court order, or the like — which the FAA returns to you after inspecting it. A change of address carries a harder edge: § 107.77(c) says that once your permanent mailing address changes, you may not exercise the certificate’s privileges more than 30 days later unless you have notified the FAA of the new address. An unreported move can quietly ground you after a month.

It is worth being precise about what “losing” the certificate means, because two very different things get confused. Falling out of currency — letting the § 107.65 24-calendar-month window lapse — does not take your certificate away; it only suspends your privileges until you complete recurrent training and become current again. The certificate itself is lost only through revocation for cause — the alcohol, drug, and refusal-to-test offenses covered in Chapter 2 — which is a disciplinary action, not a missed deadline. Out of currency, you are a certificated pilot who cannot fly at the moment; revoked, you are not a certificated pilot at all.