Akin Space Law, Regulation and Policy Update | January 12, 2026

Congress rang in the new year by unveiling a three-bill minibus funding package that rejects many of the administration’s proposed space and science cuts, the White House published an EO threatening restrictions on defense contractor spending and NASA put the throttles forward on an infrastructure overhaul intended to enable the next generation of exploration. Outside the U.S., the ESA suffered a data breach, cosmonauts appear to have sealed the leaks in the ISS’s Russian module and China performed a ton of on-orbit science during 2025.
All this and more in this edition of Akin’s Space Law, Regulation and Policy Update.









