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This spring, NASA published a comprehensive document identifying nearly 200 technology areas requiring further development to meet future exploration, science, and other mission needs. The aerospace community was invited to rate the importance of these areas to help integrate the community's technical challenges and guide NASA's space technology development and investments.
Today, NASA's S by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 24, 2024
This spring, NASA published a comprehensive document identifying nearly 200 technology areas requiring further development to meet future exploration, science, and other mission needs. The aerospace community was invited to rate the importance of these areas to help integrate the community's technical challenges and guide NASA's space technology development and investments.
Today, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) released the 2024 Civil Space Shortfall Ranking document. This document integrates inputs from NASA mission directorates and centers, industry organizations of various sizes, government agencies, academia, and other stakeholders. STMD will use this inaugural list and its annual updates to inform its technology development projects and investments.
"Identifying consensus among challenges across the aerospace industry will help us find solutions, together," said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. "This is the groundwork for strengthening the nation's technological capabilities to pave the way for new discoveries, economic opportunities, and scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity."
The results highlight strong stakeholder agreement among the 30 most critical shortfalls. Leading the list is the challenge of surviving and operating through the lunar night, where extreme temperature drops hinder science experiments, rovers, habitats, and more. Potential solutions include new power systems, thermal management, and motor technologies. Following closely are the needs for high-power energy generation on the Moon and Mars and high-performance spaceflight computing.
Other highly rated capability areas in the top 20 include advanced habitation systems, autonomous systems and robotics, communications and navigation, power, avionics, and nuclear propulsion. Beyond the top quartile, stakeholder scores varied, reflecting their diverse interests and expertise. This variability underscores the importance of strategic investments across multiple areas to maintain U.S. leadership in space technology and drive economic growth.
STMD is now evaluating its current technology development efforts against the integrated list to identify potential adjustments within its portfolio.
"This effort is an excellent example of our directorates working together to assess future architecture needs that will enable exploration and science for decades to come," said Nujoud Merancy, deputy associate administrator for the Strategy and Architecture Office within NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.
The 2024 rankings are based on 1,231 total responses, including 769 internal and 462 external inputs. Among these, twenty were consolidated responses representing multiple individuals from the same organization. After calculating average shortfall scores for each organization, STMD grouped, totaled, and averaged scores for nine stakeholder groups and applied predetermined weights to create the overall ranking. The document also includes ranked results for each stakeholder group based on the 2024 feedback.
The rankings are derived from numerical scores and not responses to open-ended questions. NASA expects the qualitative feedback to provide additional insights.
NASA will host a webinar on July 26, 2024, at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss the ranking process and results.
Register for the Stakeholder Webinar
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Civil Space Challenges
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