NASA Bolsters Golden Age of Exploration with Technology Priorities

As NASA prepares for long-duration missions to the Moon that will pave the way for human exploration on Mars, the agency is tapping into America’s expanding space economy to help guide its strategic technology investments. This initiative, led by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate invites collaboration from U.S. industry leaders, academic institutions, and other government agencies to help prioritize critical technology development needs – known as shortfalls – identified for future science and exploration missions. 

“NASA wants to hear directly from the nation’s brightest minds to drive solutions for our greatest technology needs as we lead America’s exploration through the solar system,” said Greg Stover, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue collaboration with industry to support our most ambitious missions and increase agility, prioritizing NASA’s technology efforts ensures the most efficient and impactful progress for the agency and its stakeholders.” 

Until Friday, Feb. 20, NASA will collect input from the aerospace community on consolidated technology shortfalls, such as developing infrastructure and capabilities for long-term operations in the lunar and Martian environments. Technology stakeholders will participate in virtual meetings, provide feedback, and submit their shortfall ranking to the agency.

This effort builds on NASA’s first shortfall ranking exercise in 2024 which asked participants to rank 187 civil space shortfalls, resulting in an integrated list of technology priorities. Based on the invaluable feedback provided by stakeholders in the first exercise, NASA has streamlined the process by consolidating the shortfalls into 32 broader, integrated categories, each addressing specific needs to provide further definition and context. This restructuring maintains the original content’s depth while creating a more efficient and accessible feedback mechanism for participants. 

NASA will analyze and aggregate the rankings to produce priority lists for each stakeholder group, which will be made publicly available for continued collaboration. This prioritization framework will guide NASA’s evaluation of current technology development efforts to identify necessary adjustments within its existing portfolios.

The shortfall prioritization process may inspire new investments within NASA or spark innovative partnerships with external stakeholders. This initiative also has the potential to unlock emerging commercial opportunities and accelerate growth in the U.S. space economy.

As NASA nears its next mission to the Moon, prioritizing the most important and impactful efforts helps NASA appropriately direct available resources to best support mission needs for the agency and the nation. To maintain this collaborative approach, STMD plans to conduct feedback sessions and workshops every three years with industry, academia, and other government agencies, creating a dynamic process that continuously incorporates stakeholder insights and end-user perspectives.

The agency remains committed to refining this engagement framework, ensuring it delivers maximum value to all participants while advancing America’s leadership in space exploration and technology development.

To review the list of technology shortfalls and add input to NASA Space Technology’s prioritization effort, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/spacetechpriorities

By: Jasmine Hopkins

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Loura Hall

Hubble Spies Stellar Blast Setting Clouds Ablaze

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a jet of gas from a forming star shooting across the dark expanse. The bright pink and green patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80/81, a pair of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects previously observed by Hubble in 1995. The patch to the upper left is part of HH 81, and the bottom streak is part of HH 80.

Herbig-Haro objects are bright, glowing regions that occur when jets of ionized gas ejected by a newly forming star collide with slower, previously ejected outflows of gas from that star. HH 80/81’s outflow stretches over 32 light-years, making it the largest protostellar outflow known. 

Protostars are fed by infalling gas from the surrounding environment, some of which can be seen in residual “accretion disks” orbiting the forming star.  Ionized material within these disks can interact with the protostars’ strong magnetic fields, which channel some of the particles toward the pole and outward in the form of jets. 

As the jets eject material at high speeds, they can produce strong shock waves when the particles collide with previously ejected gas. These shocks heat the clouds of gas and excite the atoms, causing them to glow in what we see as HH objects.

HH 80/81 are the brightest HH objects known to exist. The source powering these luminous objects is the protostar IRAS 18162-2048. It’s roughly 20 times the mass of the Sun, and it’s the most massive protostar in the entire L291 molecular cloud. From Hubble data, astronomers measured the speed of parts of HH 80/81 to be over 1,000 km/s, the fastest recorded outflow in both radio and visual wavelengths from a young stellar object. Unusually, this is the only HH jet found that is driven by a young, very massive star, rather than a type of young, low-mass star. 

The sensitivity and resolution of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 was critical to astronomers, allowing them to study fine details, movements, and structural changes of these objects. The HH 80/81 pair lies 5,500 light-years away within the Sagittarius constellation.

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Susan Schuh: Supporting the Humans in Human Spaceflight 

Susan Schuh has dedicated her career to helping humans adapt to life beyond Earth.  

As the Flight Crew Integration Operational Habitability (OpsHab) team lead in NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Schuh leads efforts to understand what it is really like to live and work in space. She turns that information into progress by documenting astronauts’ feedback to improve current and future spaceflight missions. 

Her work not only supports crews aboard the International Space Station, but also provides critical information for NASA’s preparations to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before through Artemis missions.  

Her team supports astronaut inflight and postflight debriefs, capturing and analyzing feedback to help NASA apply lessons learned. They also manage one of NASA’s most valuable habitability tools, the Crew Comments Database. With more than 115,000 entries spanning 25 years of International Space Station missions, it is the only comprehensive and searchable record of crew feedback in existence. Every comment, from how astronauts sleep to how they organize supplies, becomes part of NASA’s collective learning. 

“The Crew Comments Database is my work pride and joy,” Schuh said. “It’s been an invaluable resource for operations and development and continues to lend itself to future exploration.” 

Schuh’s path to NASA began with a mentor who saw her potential early on. While studying psychology at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, she was introduced to human factors research by Dr. Gerald Gamache, whose work on the effects of the Chernobyl reactor explosion helped shape her understanding of how people function in complex environments.  

While completing her master’s degree in human factors and systems at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, Schuh began her first internship at NASA in 2000. “Even from the first days of my internship at Johnson, I knew I was meant to be a part of this community supporting humans living and working in space,” she said.  

Schuh left Johnson briefly to support human systems integration for the Navy and Air Force but returned in 2006. Since then, she has continued to shape how astronauts experience living and working in space. 

Her mentor’s influence extended beyond Schuh’s technical work. “Dr. Gamache was also a community builder outside of his professional life, and I’d like to think some of that rubbed off on me,” she said. That inspiration led her to found the Johnson Parenting community in 2020, which now includes more than 600 members who share support and resources for working parents across the center. 

Schuh has learned that her work is about more than data—it is about people. “Being purposeful in taking time to listen and be willing to learn and collaborate has made all the difference for me,” she said. “Over time, I’ve learned a lot about perseverance. This work has required it, encouraging folks to utilize the Crew Comments Database and keeping the feedback process empowered and robust.” 

She is most proud of her family, known as Team Schuh—her husband, Scott, who works on the Orion Ascent Abort Mode Team, and their three daughters, Wilhelmina, Lorelei, and Franny. “They’re the reason I keep striving to balance work, family, and everything in between,” she said.  

Finding that balance has been an ongoing struggle for her. “One of my biggest professional challenges, especially in the last 14 years since my oldest daughter was born, has been finding work-life balance,” she said. “I often struggle with creating boundaries and calling it a day at a reasonable time. I won’t pretend I have the secret recipe, but I’m working on it for sure.” Schuh credits the Johnson Parenting community for helping her and others along the way. 

Outside of work, Schuh finds peace in the water and in nature. Her father, who worked in underwater engineering, taught her to scuba dive when she was 11. “We’ve taken some amazing multi-day trips together, including multiple visits to Cay Sal Bank,” she said. “He’s my favorite dive buddy, and I look forward to many more dive trips with him.” 

Looking ahead, Schuh hopes to pass on that same sense of purpose she has found at NASA to the next generation. “Make connections and nurture them. It’s always cool to be kind,” she said. “Stay true to yourself and your values. Tell the people you admire how and why they inspire you.” 

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NASA Marshall Removes 2 Historic Test Stands

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, removed two of its historic test stands – the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and the Dynamic Test Facility – with carefully coordinated implosions on Jan. 10, 2026. The demolition of these historic structures is part of a larger project at Marshall that began in spring 2022, targeting several inactive structures and building a dynamic, interconnected campus ready for the next era of space exploration. Crews began demolition in December 2025 at the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator. Learn more about these iconic facilities.

Credits: NASA

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Lee Mohon

Final Steps Underway for NASA’s First Crewed Artemis Moon Mission

As NASA moves closer to launch of the Artemis II test flight, the agency soon will roll its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launch pad for the first time at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin final integration, testing, and launch rehearsals.

NASA is targeting no earlier than Saturday, Jan. 17, to begin the multi-hour trek from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B. The four-mile journey on the crawler-transporter-2 will take up to 12 hours. Teams are working around the clock to close out all tasks ahead of rollout. However, this target date is subject to change if additional time is needed for technical preparations or weather.

“We are moving closer to Artemis II, with rollout just around the corner,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “We have important steps remaining on our path to launch and crew safety will remain our top priority at every turn, as we near humanity’s return to the Moon.”

As with all new developments of complex systems, engineers have been troubleshooting several items in recent days and weeks. During final checkouts before rollout, technicians found a cable involved in the flight termination system was bent out of specifications. Teams are replacing it and will test the new cable over the weekend. Additionally, a valve associated with Orion’s hatch pressurization exhibited issues leading up to a Dec. 20 countdown demonstration test. On Jan. 5, the team successfully replaced and tested it. Engineers also worked to resolve leaky ground support hardware required to load gaseous oxygen into Orion for breathing air. 

Rollout

Once the integrated rocket and spacecraft reach the launch pad, NASA will immediately begin a long checklist of launch pad preparations, including connecting ground support equipment such as electrical lines, fuel environmental control system ducts, and cryogenic propellant feeds. Teams will power up all integrated systems at the pad for the first time to ensure flight hardware components are functioning properly with each other, the mobile launcher, and ground infrastructure systems.

Once complete, the Artemis II astronauts, NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will conduct a final walkdown at the pad.

Wet dress rehearsal, tanking

At the end of January, NASA will conduct a wet dress rehearsal, which is a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket. During wet dress, teams demonstrate the ability to load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, conduct a launch countdown, and practice safely removing propellant from the rocket without astronauts onsite.

During launch, a closeout crew will be responsible for securing astronauts in Orion and closing its hatches. The closeout crew also will use this rehearsal to practice their procedures safely without astronauts aboard the spacecraft.

The wet dress rehearsal will include several “runs” to demonstrate the launch team’s ability to hold, resume, and recycle to several different times in the final 10 minutes of the countdown, known as terminal count.

The first run will begin approximately 49 hours before launch when launch teams are called to their stations, to 1 minute 30 seconds before launch, followed by a planned three-minute hold and then countdown resumption to 33 seconds before launch – the point at which the rocket’s automatic launch sequencer will control the final seconds of the countdown. Teams then will recycle back to T-10 minutes and hold, then resume down to 30 seconds before launch as part of a second run.

While NASA has integrated lessons learned from Artemis I into the launch countdown procedures, the agency will pause to address any issues during the test or at any other point should technical challenges arise. Engineers will have a close eye on propellant loading of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket, after challenges encountered with liquid hydrogen loading during Artemis I wet dress rehearsals. Teams also will pay close attention to the effectiveness of recently updated procedures to limit how much gaseous nitrogen accumulates in the space between Orion’s crew module and launch abort system hatches, which could pose an issue for the closeout crew.

Additional wet dress rehearsals may be required to ensure the vehicle is completely checked out and ready for flight.

If needed, NASA may rollback SLS and Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work ahead of launch after the wet dress rehearsal.

Next steps toward launch

Following a successful wet dress rehearsal, NASA will convene a flight readiness review where the mission management team will assess the readiness of all systems, including flight hardware, infrastructure, and launch, flight, and recovery teams before committing to a launch date.

While the Artemis II launch window opens as early as Friday, Feb. 6, the mission management team will assess flight readiness after the wet dress rehearsal across the spacecraft, launch infrastructure, and the crew and operations teams before selecting a launch date.

To determine potential launch dates, engineers identified key constraints required to accomplish the mission and keep the crew inside Orion safe. The resulting launch periods are the days or weeks where the spacecraft and rocket can meet mission objectives. These launch periods account for the complex orbital mechanics involved in launching on a precise trajectory toward the Moon while the Earth is rotating on its axis and the Moon is orbiting Earth each month in its lunar cycle. This results in a pattern of approximately one week of launch opportunities, followed by three weeks without launch opportunities.

There are several primary parameters that dictate launch availability within these periods. Because of its unique trajectory relative to subsequent lunar landing missions, these key constraints are unique to the Artemis II test flight.

• The launch day and time must allow SLS to be able to deliver Orion into a high Earth orbit where the crew and ground teams will evaluate the spacecraft’s life support systems before the crew ventures to the Moon.
• Orion also must be in the proper alignment with the Earth and Moon at the time of the trans-lunar injection burn. The Artemis II trans-lunar injection burn places Orion on course to flyby the Moon, and also sets it on a free return trajectory, in which the spacecraft uses the Moon’s gravity to send the spacecraft back to Earth without additional major propulsive maneuvers. 
• The trajectory for a given day must ensure Orion is not in darkness for more than 90 minutes at a time so that the solar array wings can receive and convert sunlight to electricity, and the spacecraft can maintain an optimal temperature range. Mission planners eliminate potential launch dates that would send Orion into extended eclipses during the flight.
• The launch date must support a trajectory that allows for the proper entry profile planned during Orion’s return to Earth.

The periods below show launch availability through April 2026. Mission planners refine the periods based on updated analysis approximately two months before they begin and are subject to change. 

Launch Period Jan. 31 – Feb. 14

• Launch opportunities February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11

Launch Period Feb. 28 – March 13

• Launch opportunities March 6, 7, 8, 9, 11

Launch Period March 27 – April 10

• Launch opportunities April 1, 3, 4, 5, 6

In addition to the launch opportunities based on orbital mechanics and performance requirements, there are also limitations on which days within a launch period can be viable based on commodity replenishment, weather, and other users on the Eastern Range schedule. As a general rule, up to four launch attempts may be attempted within the approximate week of opportunities that exist within a launch period.

As the agency prepares for its first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit in more than 50 years, NASA expects to learn along the way, both on the ground and in flight, and will let the readiness and performance of its systems dictate when the agency is ready to launch.

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, the approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight is the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign. It is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions to the Moon’s surface, leading to a sustained presence on the Moon that will help the agency prepare to send the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars.

Learn more about NASA’s Artemis campaign:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

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Lauren E. Low