I'm no expert, but from what I've read, it's not necessarily a deadline. It just marks five months into the approval process whereby you can expect to have an answer up or down. But they could ask for more data or info, which would set things back possibly many more months.
But my guess is that they got it right this time with help from the law firm, which has on staff former EPA employees.
On this board, it's been stated that the firm which manufactures the AS machine, is very interested in it...