Canon is the general flow of events as part of Lore and an overarching plot. As such, special events may advance this plot and provide a glimpse of the broader picture, and players may influence the course of future rounds through events committed in this round. Namely:
In any round in which a character does not die and was playing as themselves rather than an Antagonist, their progress in skills and stats is recorded and available on their next playthrough. This means that anyone who successfully returns on the Escape Shuttle, gets in an Escape Pod, or even just survives on the ship itself will be considered to have survived with their earned skills and stats intact. Failure merely penalizes you by reverting your character to its state at the beginning of the round based on the bio and neuro scan that NovusCorp has on file for you.
Major successes, events, or discoveries, like new planets or moons, eliminating the Syndicate presence from a star system, finding important wrecks in space or on a planet, exploring derelicts, and similar will permanently mark them on the ongoing star map.
Research that is properly stored in the Vault, or carried aboard the Shuttle Vault, is transferrable to the next round.
If you have money or stocks, the current value of your money and amount of your stocks carry over into future rounds if you were not an Antagonist. Note that stocks may change, sometimes drastically, in value between sessions, especially if a Major Event changes a company's value.
Whatever the admins feel like coding. Set up a base on a newly found planet and built it up? Maybe it'll be there in a future round. Managed to crash the stock market and drive a company into the penny stocks? It may join the Syndicate out of desperation, or get bought out by another company. And so on.