NASA has outlined its 40 primary technology focus areas for Fiscal Year 2026, signalling a concentrated effort to fund the capabilities necessary for long-term lunar infrastructure and deep space exploration.
For Canada’s space sector, the shortfalls and priority investments offer a look at some possibilities that might be open for international collaboration beyond what they might already be aware of.
The targeted investments were derived from the newly published 2026 Civil Space Shortfall Ranking, a comprehensive assessment built on 454 responses from the commercial space industry, academia, and other government agencies.
While the public feedback provided the quantitative foundation, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) filtered the results through several strategic lenses. The final 40 focus areas merge the aerospace community’s priorities with NASA’s internal “Ignition” initiatives, scientific objectives, and opportunities for cross-agency collaboration.
According to Angela Krenn, acting chief architect for NASA Technology, leveraging stakeholder expertise ensures the commercial sector is prepared to tackle these hurdles. “As our process matures, each round of input helps target our resources, ensuring America’s space industry can tackle tomorrow’s greatest challenges,” Krenn noted.
The 40 primary focus areas, which aim to address these technical challenges with the greatest depth and breadth that funding allows, are grouped by theme below:
Lunar Surface & Landing Capabilities:
- Land on lunar south pole exploration sites in various illumination conditions with appropriate accuracy.
- Provide low power, thermal management, and actuation for distributed surface assets to survive and operate in the lunar environment.
- Predict plume surface interaction (PSI) surface erosion, crater width/depth, and ejecta energy flux during landing.
- Perform site preparation and bulk regolith manipulation for infrastructure construction, including landing pads, berms, and regolith overburden for radiation protection.
- Perform stable touchdown and operation of large vehicles on uneven, sloped, and undulating lunar surfaces.
- Provide extreme cold-tolerant robotic and mobility capabilities to enable use cases for surveying and accessing permanently shadowed regions for sample retrieval.
- Autonomously assemble and construct structures on the lunar surface.
- Construct structures on the lunar surface through advanced manufacturing techniques.
- Excavate and transport lunar regolith at a scale relevant for a demonstration mission.
- Produce oxygen from lunar regolith at a scale relevant for a demonstration mission.
- Provide scalable, reliable surface-to-surface communications between assets on the lunar surface that is usable by all participating elements.
- Develop a lunar position, navigation, and timing architecture capable of scaling to long-term operational needs.
In-Space Transportation, Navigation & Operations:
- Provide magnetically shielded, human-rated electric propulsion.
- Provide in-space diagnostics for electric propulsion.
- Transfer Earth-storable propellant and pressurized gases between exploration assets in space.
- Transfer pressurized gases between exploration assets on planetary surfaces.
- Transfer low-loss cryogenic fluid between spacecraft in partial gravity environments at scales sufficient for human exploration missions.
- Transfer low-loss cryogenic fluid between spacecraft in microgravity environments at scales sufficient for human exploration missions.
- Efficiently store propellant for appropriate durations in partial gravity environments while minimizing boil-off.
- Efficiently store propellant for appropriate durations in microgravity environments while minimizing boil-off.
- Provide autonomous orbit determination, navigation, and pointing of operating spacecraft in deep space.
- Robotically assemble modular flight elements for large transportation systems.
- Provide reliable transportation for small spacecraft to destinations beyond cislunar space.
- Extend U.S. space situational awareness capabilities to cislunar space.
- Implement space-based manufacturing techniques for in-situ repairs and replacement of hardware components.
- Offload, handle, and manipulate payloads from elevated heights on planetary surfaces.
Computing, Networking & Habitat:
- Perform high-performance computing in extreme temperature, high radiation, and dusty environments.
- Develop space-based computing technology needed for autonomous on-board operations.
- Provide advanced networking needed for multi-spacecraft responsive space operations.
- Provide mass-efficient habitat structures capable of supporting mission-relevant crew size and duration.
- Provide high-efficiency power conversion using alternative radioisotopes to maximize the effectiveness of existing plutonium sources.
Science & Deep Space Observations:
- Increase sensitivity and resolution of science instruments by orders of magnitude with quantum technologies.
- Increase sensitivity and performance of photon detectors.
- Provide precise attitude control for ultra-stable observatories.
- Provide low-cost science observations from orbits requiring continuous propulsive activity.
- Autonomously perform science operations on commercial LEO destinations and lunar surface laboratories.
- Store and process cryogenically cold samples for return to Earth.
Mars & Atmospheric Entry:
- Develop and validate performance models for entry systems.
- Access atmospheric planetary bodies with resiliency to launch date using aerocapture.
- Decelerate large payloads to the Martian surface.
NASA notes that this list represents a “snapshot in time” and is subject to change as information, agency objectives, and directions evolve.
FY26 Civil Space Shortfall Prioritization
See page 10 of the embedded document for the top 40 focus areas, and page 7 for the broader 1-32 shortfall rankings.