Insights

Los Angeles – April 20, 2026: The Los Angeles Business Journal has named Amy Karnikian to its list of Top 100 Lawyers 2026, recognizing the region's leading lawyers for their legal achievements, community involvement, and impact on the profession. 

San Francisco – December 2, 2025: Crowell & Moring represented Antares, an advanced nuclear energy startup building a small modular nuclear reactor, in connection with its $96 million Series B funding round.

San Francisco – September 15, 2021: Crowell & Moring client Payload, a new digital media company focused on the business and policy of space, raised a $650,000 seed round, to provide business and policy news and analysis to aerospace and defense industry professionals. Winklevoss Capital, the venture firm owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, as well as Andy Weissman and Sam McIngvale, is the primary source of financing source for this seed round.

We are pleased to announce that Crowell & Moring and Crowell GovCon Strategies will be exhibiting at Farnborough International Airshow (FIA 2026), one of the world's premier aerospace, defence and space events. FIA is where the aerospace, defence and space industry comes together. It is where deals are made, partnerships are formed, and the future direction of the sector takes shape. For businesses operating in this environment, navigating complex regulation, competing for government contracts, protecting critical intellectual property and managing international trade across multiple jurisdictions demands the right legal and strategic counsel.

On May 6, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published a long-awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would create a formal process for designating drone-free zones — known as Unmanned Aircraft Flight Restrictions (UAFRs) — over critical infrastructure facilities. The proposed rule has significant implications for the entire drone ecosystem. Facility operators across a broad range of industries would gain a potential pathway to restrict unauthorized drone access to their airspace, while commercial drone operators and companies that rely on UAS services face new compliance obligations, operational constraints, and potential criminal liability in designated zones.

On January 28, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it would reopen the comment period for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations” for fourteen days. This NPRM, jointly published with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on August 7, 2025, introduces performance-based regulations for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations and the third-party services that support them. Although the NPRM’s initial comment period closed on October 6, 2025, the FAA is now accepting additional feedback through February 11, 2026, with a particular focus on the proposed rule’s right-of-way and detect-and-avoid requirements. The FAA previously rejected formal requests to extend the initial comment period, citing the deadline imposed by Executive Order 14307.

The ABA Forum on Air and Space Law will hold its 2020 Washington Update Conference (WUC) at the W Hotel in Washington, DC. The 2020 WUC will include preeminent aviation and aerospace lawyers, senior airline, airport, and labor union executives, and key government decision makers. The Forum hosts this session each year to encourage industry-wide dialogue on the most important regulatory topics in aviation. This year’s conference will feature panels addressing leading issues in the air cargo industry, drones and aircraft certification.

Traditionally, space law was mainly limited to States and international organizations, but now the “commercialization” of Space is steep and accelerating.  In a report dated May 2022, Citi expects the space industry to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040, after the global space economy’s value reached $424 billion in 2020, having expanded 70% since 2010.  Whereas State actors were the only real driving forces behind the development of Space activities until about 15 years ago, private interests have no doubt driven the development of this nascent industry.