NASA is considering upgrading its "aging" data center infrastructure, with a new request for information (RFI) for potential partners.

The space agency said that its "data center infrastructure is in a steady state of decline due to constrained budgets and needs to be modernized to ensure safe, continuous, and efficient mission operations."

An RFI does not guarantee that it will lead to a request for proposal, nor a contract.

NASA said that any potential upgrades would need to be cost-effective, but also support growing compute demands and hybrid architectures.

The agency said that it is "particularly interested in ideas that highlight mutual value. Respondents have the opportunity to share concepts that could improve mission continuity, and advance infrastructure sustainability, while also identifying ways that collaboration could inform commercial capabilities, support research and development, or demonstrate new models and technologies at broader scale."

NASA has faced sustained budget pressure under the Trump Administration, with the President proposing a 23 percent cut to NASA and a 46 percent cut to NASA Science for FY2027. In May, House appropriators approved a spending bill that would keep NASA's budget flat over 2026, and a smaller cut for Science.

Budget uncertainty has impacted the agency's infrastructure rollout, with NASA pausing plans last August to acquire lunar communication ground stations.

A 2024 special report conducted by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the space agency’s missions are being hampered by inadequate high-end computing (HEC) resources. Supercomputers used for the Artemis Moon program were overwhelmingly reliant on old CPUs.