ACME authorization "expires" duration — is 8-day validity a fixed policy?

We’re using Google Trust Services’ production ACME API (dv.acme-v02.api.pki.goog) for automated certificate issuance.

We’ve observed that when we place a new order and fetch the raw authorization object, the “expires” field is consistently set to exactly 8 days after the order’s creation time — reproduced across multiple different domains and multiple different ACME accounts.

Within this 8-day window, a new order for the same domain/account automatically reuses the existing authorization (status “valid”, no fresh challenge needed). After 8 days, a new order results in a fresh “pending” authorization requiring a new DNS-01 challenge — even though GTS’s CP/CPS (Section 4.2.1) states validation data may be reused for up to 200 days.

Questions:

  1. Is this 8-day authorization validity window an intentional, documented policy — separate from the 200-day validation-data-reuse ceiling mentioned in the CP/CPS?

  2. Is this duration stable/guaranteed, or could it change without notice?

  3. Does this differ for wildcard domain authorizations?

Our confusion: GTS’s CP/CPS (Section 4.2.1) states “Completed validations and supporting evidence may be re-used for up to 200 days prior to issuing the Certificate” — but what we observe is a hard boundary at 8 days, not 200 days.

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