What Does NASA’s 2026/2027 Performance Plan Reveal About the Agency’s Moon-to-Mars Strategy?

Key Takeaways

• Artemis II is complete, shifting NASA’s attention toward 2027 tests and a 2028 lunar landing.
• NASA is increasingly moving from owning transportation systems toward buying commercial services.
• FY 2025 performance was strong overall, but technology, infrastructure, workforce, and LEO risks remain.

Artemis II Turned a Planned Milestone Into a Completed Flight

On April 1, 2026, NASA launched Artemis II from Kennedy Space Center, sending Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on the first crewed flight of the Artemis program. Orion completed its lunar flyby and splashed down on April 10 in the Pacific Ocean off California after a mission lasting 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes.

That achievement changes how NASA’s Volume of Integrated Performance should be read. The document presents the Artemis II Flight Readiness Review and launch as FY 2026 performance milestones because it records NASA’s planning framework at a particular point in the federal budget and performance cycle. As of August 2026, both milestones have been completed.

Artemis II provided flight experience with the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion, deep-space navigation, crew operations, life-support systems, communications, reentry, and recovery. NASA can now use actual crewed-flight data rather than relying solely on ground testing and the uncrewed Artemis I mission.

Attention has moved to Artemis III, scheduled for 2027 as a crewed demonstration mission in low Earth orbit. NASA plans to test rendezvous and docking between Orion and test versions of one or both commercial human landing systems being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. NASA named Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano to the Artemis III crew in June 2026.

Hardware preparation has also advanced. NASA reported on August 5 that the Artemis III Orion crew and service modules had been joined on July 30 at Kennedy Space Center. The integrated spacecraft is undergoing testing before the mission.

This sequence differs from earlier Artemis architectures. Artemis III was once expected to conduct the next crewed lunar landing. NASA revised that architecture in 2026, inserting the Earth-orbit demonstration to reduce risk before committing astronauts to a lunar descent.

Artemis IV now carries the planned return of astronauts to the lunar surface. NASA continues to target early 2028 for the mission. Two astronauts are expected to descend near the lunar South Pole using a commercial human landing system, with the provider determined by lander readiness.

The revised sequence gives the performance plan continuing value. Its FY 2027 goals include accelerating lunar surface suit development, demonstrating rendezvous and docking with commercial landers, and evaluating lander readiness for the subsequent surface mission. The document is consequently more than a retrospective scorecard. It provides a management view of how NASA intends to move from Artemis II into repeated Moon-to-Mars operations.

What NASA’s 2026/2027 Performance Plan Measures

NASA’s 2026/2027 performance plan sits inside its Volume of Integrated Performance, which combines an FY 2026/2027 Agency Performance Plan, an FY 2025 Annual Performance Report, an FY 2027 Annual Evidence Plan, and a Capacity Assessment.

The performance plan corresponds with the FY 2027 President’s Budget Request. The annual performance section measures FY 2025 results, and the evidence portions examine how NASA develops information for program, acquisition, policy, and management decisions.

The FY 2026/2027 plan organizes agency activity under four strategic themes: Explore, Discover, Innovate, and Advance.

Exploration targets cover Artemis, a sustained lunar presence, Mars-enabling technologies, commercialization of exploration transportation, International Space Station operations, and commercial low-Earth-orbit destinations.

Science targets include mission development, space weather, Earth science applications, mission operations, Earthdata modernization, and Mars investigations.

Technology goals encompass lunar power, surface infrastructure, propellant, commercial technology demonstrations, aeronautics, communications, and radioisotope power systems.

Agency-management goals address cybersecurity, facilities, employee safety, and astronaut and pilot health.

The framework matters because broad policy objectives become measurable activities. Returning astronauts to the Moon becomes a sequence of flight reviews, docking demonstrations, hardware deliveries, procurements, integration tests, and readiness assessments. Supporting space commerce becomes a collection of industry partnerships, commercial procurements, technology demonstrations, station-development contracts, payload-delivery services, and lunar infrastructure programs.

Commercialization now appears throughout NASA rather than in one isolated program office. It is visible in Artemis transportation, lunar logistics, low-Earth-orbit stations, surface power, payload delivery, technology demonstrations, propellant, communications, and industry partnerships.

New Space Economy’s examination of NASA’s transition toward commercial systems provides additional context for this shift from government-owned transportation toward architectures in which NASA increasingly purchases capabilities from privately owned systems.

A performance plan should not be interpreted as a guarantee that every mission or procurement will occur on its stated date. NASA programs contain interdependent technical, budget, regulatory, contractual, and workforce dependencies. Performance goals instead expose the intermediate outcomes NASA expects organizations to deliver and create a basis for measuring execution.

Moon Base Planning Is Becoming a Procurement Program

One of the strongest shifts visible in the NASA 2026/2027 performance plan is the treatment of sustained lunar activity as an infrastructure and procurement problem rather than a sequence of isolated expeditions.

Performance Goal 1.2 calls for establishing an enduring presence on the lunar surface. Its FY 2027 milestones include development of Commercial Lunar Payload Services 2.0 to support establishment of a Moon Base.

NASA made that intent more concrete in its 2026 Building the Moon Base planning material. The agency outlined expanded Commercial Lunar Payload Services opportunities, larger payload classes, additional transportation procurements, and a CLPS 2.0 acquisition intended to increase lunar delivery capacity.

Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) originally gave NASA a mechanism for purchasing lunar payload delivery from private operators rather than having the agency design and operate every robotic lander itself. The emerging approach broadens that logic. Repeated lunar deliveries could eventually support scientific instruments, power equipment, communications hardware, mobility systems, resource-prospecting equipment, construction demonstrations, navigation aids, and other surface assets.

NASA has also created a performance goal for commercial lunar propellant. The plan calls for a development roadmap and a procurement process covering commercial capabilities to produce, store, transfer, test, and transport rocket propellant on the lunar surface.

The FY 2027 NASA budget request allocates funding to commercial Moon-to-Mars infrastructure and transportation and describes efforts intended to establish more affordable transportation and robotic lunar-delivery capability. The request remains a presidential budget proposal rather than enacted FY 2027 appropriations as of August 2026.

Propellant presents an economic characteristic that differentiates it from many exploration systems. It is consumable. If lunar activities reach sufficient scale, repeated demand could support businesses involved in resource extraction, processing, cryogenic storage, thermal management, transfer equipment, surface transportation, tankers, and measurement systems.

Commercial viability remains unproven. Early demand would depend heavily on government purchasing, and lunar resource production faces substantial engineering and economic barriers. NASA is nevertheless beginning to create the procurement framework through which such capabilities could be demonstrated.

Power receives comparable attention. NASA’s Surface Infrastructure and Exploration program includes work on commercial radioisotope power, solar systems, power management, batteries, thermal systems, and technologies suitable for sustained operations on the Moon and eventually Mars.

The FY 2027 budget request includes development and demonstration work involving commercial radioisotope power systems. NASA is also examining Americium-241 as a potential alternative radioisotope source and continuing work on surface solar technologies and power-generation concepts.

New Space Economy’s analysis of NASA’s 2026 civil-space technology shortfalls places these activities within a broader set of unresolved needs involving lunar operations, mobility, computing, navigation, communications, power, resource utilization, Mars entry systems, and autonomous operations.

The emerging commercial opportunity is consequently tied less to a single hypothetical lunar market than to whether NASA and other customers create repeat demand for transportation, energy, logistics, communications, maintenance, mobility, data, and surface services.

Commercial Artemis Transportation Is Moving Beyond Partnership Language

NASA’s treatment of commercial transportation may have greater long-term consequences than any individual spacecraft procurement.

Performance Goal 1.4 directs NASA to transition exploration programs toward commercial transportation for future Moon and Mars missions. FY 2026 work includes defining top-level requirements using industry feedback and conducting acquisition-strategy activities. FY 2027 work moves toward initial procurement and preliminary design activity with commercial transportation partners.

The FY 2025 performance section shows that this process was already underway. NASA reported completing work to define needs and objectives for commercial transportation supporting later Artemis missions and reviewing acquisition approaches intended to align performance, cost, and schedule incentives.

The agency’s FY 2027 Annual Evidence Plan makes the policy direction explicit. One priority question asks how NASA can support a vibrant commercial space economy. An associated Artemis Commercial Transportation Systems Requirements Analysis examines transportation capability, affordability, mission integration, launch, payload delivery, crew transport, and risk.

NASA’s FY 2027 budget also establishes a Commercial Moon-to-Mars Infrastructure and Transportation program. The budget request summary proposes $744 million for the program in FY 2027, including commercial capabilities intended to support crew launch and return for later Artemis missions and expanded robotic lunar deliveries.

The distinction between a traditional development contract and a commercial service is important. Under a conventional government development model, NASA may fund a system closely tailored to a single mission architecture. A services model instead seeks to purchase an outcome such as transportation, cargo delivery, station access, or communications.

Commercial Crew and Commercial Resupply demonstrated that this structure can work in low Earth orbit. Lunar transportation creates different constraints. Mission frequency is lower, failure consequences are severe, landers require complex interfaces with crewed systems, and some architectures depend on demanding technologies such as in-space propellant transfer.

Competition can also weaken if only one provider achieves operational readiness.

NASA’s decision to use Artemis III as a lander integration demonstration partly addresses that risk. The agency can collect crewed rendezvous, docking, communications, life-support interface, and operational data before committing astronauts to a lunar landing.

NASA’s July 2026 explanation of the Artemis III lander demonstration describes the mission as preparation for lunar surface operations beginning with Artemis IV.

The commercial model consequently depends on more than private financing. NASA must define requirements, maintain safety standards, integrate systems, provide anchor demand, manage interfaces, oversee mission assurance, preserve competition where possible, and determine which capabilities should remain government-operated.

Science and Mars Remain Embedded in the Same Performance System

The emphasis on Artemis does not make the performance plan solely a lunar-exploration document.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has FY 2026 and FY 2027 milestones involving Dragonfly, Near-Earth Object Surveyor, Lunar-VISE, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, space weather, Earth science, operational science missions, and Mars investigations.

Roman will operate near the Sun-Earth L2 region and conduct large astronomical surveys addressing dark energy, cosmic structure, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.

Near-Earth Object Surveyor has also moved toward a clearer schedule. NASA’s current NEO Surveyor mission page lists launch no earlier than September 2027. The infrared telescope is designed specifically to discover and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets, including dark objects that are difficult to detect in visible light.

Earth science appears partly as a data-management problem. NASA’s performance plan calls for moving at least 85% of targeted Earth science archives and distribution into the centralized Earthdata cloud platform during FY 2026, increasing the target to 95% during FY 2027.

Mars appears across both scientific and human-exploration planning. NASA’s performance framework calls for selecting candidate payloads for future robotic Mars opportunities, developing power systems, examining long-duration human operations, conducting analog work, and maturing technologies relevant to eventual crewed missions.

Technology milestones include regenerative fuel cells, surface power, batteries, radiators, heaters, solar arrays, dust testing, communications, and other systems that can be developed separately before being incorporated into a full Mars architecture.

This approach creates multiple participation points for commercial firms, universities, government laboratories, and international partners long before a crewed Mars mission receives a launch date.

FY 2025 Results Show Strong Goal Completion and Uneven Technology Maturation

NASA rated 17 of its 19 FY 2025 performance goals green, equivalent to 89% of the total. One goal received a yellow rating and one received a red rating. NASA reported an 82% success rate for FY 2024, making FY 2025 an improvement within the agency’s performance framework.

Science delivered several measurable accomplishments. NASA completed seven of eight planned milestones associated with major Science Mission Directorate projects. These included Dragonfly and Near-Earth Object Surveyor design reviews, Roman’s progression into assembly and testing, the SPHEREx launch, NISAR readiness activities, and progress involving MUSE and IMAP.

Commercial technology demonstrations produced one of the larger numerical overperformances. A Space Technology Mission Directorate goal called for obtaining flight-test data on at least 40 technologies. NASA reported collecting data on 75.

Commercial low-Earth-orbit development also received a green rating. NASA reported that Commercial LEO Destinations partners executed 51 milestones during FY 2025, including 17 associated with flight-development hardware. Partners delivered 2,251 technical documents for NASA review, and NASA generated 1,650 technical observations intended to reduce risk and improve operability.

The green totals need to be considered alongside the weaker results.

NASA’s facilities goal sought to keep the share of maintenance funds devoted to unscheduled work at 20% or less. The FY 2025 result was 20.3%, producing the yellow rating. The numerical difference was small, but it reflects the continuing difficulty of maintaining specialized laboratories, test stands, launch infrastructure, wind tunnels, communications assets, and other aging facilities.

The red rating was more substantial. NASA expected 60% of planned technology-maturation performance parameters to meet their requirements, but only 29% did. The Space Technology Mission Directorate tracked 91 parameters across 27 projects. Twenty-six reached their thresholds or goals, 34 were delayed, 30 failed to meet minimum thresholds because of technical problems, project changes, or off-nominal lunar landings, and one remained unresolved when NASA prepared its assessment.

Technology demonstration inherently involves uncertainty, so failure is not automatically evidence of poor management. The management issue is whether NASA can distinguish useful technical failure from schedule problems caused by weak requirements, insufficient reserves, contractor performance, procurement decisions, workforce limitations, or unrealistic planning.

The Government Accountability Office’s July 2026 assessment adds a more recent view. GAO reviewed 36 NASA major projects, 18 of which were in development. Two development projects reported annual schedule delays totaling two months, and three reported cost overruns totaling $501.4 million. Cumulative development cost overruns rose from about $4.4 billion to nearly $4.7 billion, and cumulative delays increased from 13.1 years to 14 years.

GAO found that Orion accounted for more than half of the portfolio’s annual cost overruns and almost 75% of cumulative cost overruns. The portfolio nevertheless showed relatively limited new annual cost and schedule deterioration compared with some earlier years.

Low-Earth Orbit Is the Commercial Transition With the Tightest Deadline

NASA plans to maintain the International Space Station until an orderly retirement and deorbit can occur, then shift U.S. government demand toward commercially owned orbital destinations.

This transition differs from lunar commercialization because it operates against a narrowing schedule. NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030, but replacement stations must be designed, financed, built, launched, tested, certified, supplied, and connected to crew transportation before they can provide equivalent government capability.

A June 17, 2026 GAO review reported that NASA was working with six U.S. companies on commercial station concepts and had not finalized its acquisition approach as of May 2026. GAO concluded that historical development experience suggested commercial stations could take longer than planned and recommended that NASA formally assess the probability and possible duration of a gap in continuous U.S. low-Earth-orbit capability.

NASA’s acquisition effort has advanced since the period covered by that GAO review.

The agency’s Commercial LEO Destination Contract procurement page shows that NASA released a draft request for proposals on July 6, 2026, held another industry event in July, and planned a final request for proposals in August 2026. The schedule published by NASA calls for industry proposals in October 2026 and contract award in spring 2027, although acquisition schedules can change.

NASA also reorganized its LEO activities in May 2026, creating a unified program intended to bring International Space Station operations, Commercial Crew, Commercial LEO Destinations, and related functions under a more integrated structure.

New Space Economy’s analysis of whether NASA can avoid a low-Earth-orbit gap examines the commercial implications of the transition.

NASA briefly considered a government-owned core-module approach during 2026 before returning to a strategy centered on privately owned commercial stations. New Space Economy’s coverage of that procurement reversal provides additional context on the interaction between government planning and industry feedback.

A gap in LEO capability would extend beyond astronaut presence. Commercial crew and cargo companies depend partly on destination demand. Microgravity researchers need laboratory access. International partners require time to decide how they will participate in successor platforms. Station developers need confidence that NASA will buy enough services to support investment.

The largest commercial uncertainty is demand.

NASA wants eventually to become one customer among several. Private operators would ideally earn revenue from sovereign astronaut missions, research, manufacturing, technology demonstrations, media activities, private astronauts, and other commercial users.

Whether those markets can support several expensive orbital stations remains uncertain. During the early transition period, NASA may remain the single most valuable customer even on systems described as commercial.

GAO identifies 2027 as an important decision period. NASA will need evidence that commercial capacity can arrive soon enough to support the planned ISS retirement, or it may need to examine alternatives, including extension of ISS operations. Either outcome carries financial, technical, diplomatic, and schedule consequences.

Evidence Capacity and Governance Will Decide How the Plan Is Managed

NASA’s FY 2027 Annual Evidence Plan asks two questions directly connected with the agency’s changing operating model: how NASA can support a commercially active U.S. space economy and how it can operate more effectively without losing required capabilities.

Evidence activities include commercial spaceport infrastructure analysis, Artemis commercial transportation requirements, cost and schedule evaluations, fixed-price contracting analysis, and a Data Maturity Assessment.

That selection reveals an important feature of NASA’s commercialization strategy. Commercialization is an evidence and acquisition problem as much as a policy choice.

NASA needs reliable information about commercial-provider performance, cost structures, technical maturity, schedule assumptions, fixed-price contracting, competition, safety, private demand, and which capabilities government must retain.

NASA’s Capacity Assessment examines whether the agency possesses the people, processes, data, analytical capability, and institutional independence necessary to make those decisions. Its survey material describes evidence work occurring throughout NASA’s mission directorates and support organizations.

The assessment also identifies workforce pressure. NASA reported a workforce reduction of roughly 21% through attrition in the population relevant to its assessment and described the resulting need to evaluate skill gaps and improve analytical processes.

The July 2026 GAO major-project review provides a broader external perspective. GAO reported that 25 of NASA’s 36 major projects had identified effects associated with reduced staffing. It also noted that NASA leadership had announced plans in February 2026 to resume hiring and address skill gaps.

Budget uncertainty remains part of the management environment. The President’s FY 2027 request proposes an agency funding reduction of more than 20% compared with FY 2026 enacted funding. That proposal had not become enacted FY 2027 appropriations as of August 2026, and congressional action could materially change the final funding level.

Cybersecurity illustrates how institutional capacity intersects with mission execution. NASA achieved its FY 2025 target of 80% on its agency cybersecurity scorecard. The performance plan raises the goal to 85% for FY 2026 and 88% for FY 2027.

As NASA connects more commercial spacecraft, cloud systems, scientific databases, contractors, autonomous systems, communications networks, ground infrastructure, and lunar assets, cybersecurity becomes part of mission execution rather than an administrative issue separate from exploration.

Summary

NASA’s Volume of Integrated Performance shows an agency undergoing both an operational transition and an institutional redesign.

Artemis II has moved from a planned FY 2026 milestone to a completed crewed lunar flyby. Artemis III is being prepared as a 2027 low-Earth-orbit demonstration involving Orion and commercial human landing systems. Artemis IV carries NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the lunar surface in early 2028.

The science portfolio is moving at the same time. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, described in the performance plan as an FY 2027 launch milestone, has advanced far enough that NASA and SpaceX are targeting August 30, 2026 for launch. Near-Earth Object Surveyor is now listed for launch no earlier than September 2027.

Commercialization runs through much of the agency’s planning. NASA is developing procurement structures for Artemis transportation, lunar cargo, surface infrastructure, propellant, radioisotope power, low-Earth-orbit stations, technology demonstrations, and other capabilities.

The deeper change concerns NASA’s institutional role. The agency remains a scientific organization, spacecraft operator, human-spaceflight organization, technology developer, research institution, and owner of extensive national infrastructure. Increasingly, it is also acting as an anchor customer, architecture manager, standards setter, acquisition authority, systems integrator, technical adviser, and organizer of markets in which commercial providers own a larger share of the operational hardware.

That approach can multiply government investment when competition creates capabilities that serve customers beyond NASA. It can also expose national programs to commercial financing, supplier concentration, schedule, technical, and demand risks.

FY 2025 provides evidence for both sides of the proposition. NASA rated 89% of its performance goals green and exceeded several partnership and technology-demonstration targets. Yet technology maturation produced the agency’s red performance rating, facilities missed their maintenance target, commercial station readiness remains unsettled, and GAO continues to identify concerns involving acquisition management, cost, schedule, workforce capacity, and LEO continuity.

The most consequential feature of the NASA 2026/2027 performance plan may consequently be neither one rocket nor one mission date. It is the conversion of long-term exploration policy into measurable procurements, demonstrations, infrastructure requirements, evidence activities, technical milestones, and commercial relationships.

Whether that management model can produce sustained lunar operations, preserve U.S. human-spaceflight capability in low Earth orbit, maintain NASA’s scientific portfolio, and eventually support human missions to Mars will be tested through the milestones NASA has placed on the calendar for the remainder of the decade.