I have a bunch of icons that appear on the upper left of the screen, mostly orange in colour.

If I hover over one it will say something like "Upgraded Lasers"

Clicking on them tells me a bit more like a description and something to do like 'Research the "Spectrum Amplification" technology' with a blue circle on the left and a blue arrow pointing down into a circle on the right.

Clicking either does nothing though hovering over the blue downward arrow gives me a useless hint to, in this case, right click to send the fleet to a specific location, where that location having any relevance to the "mission" might be being anyone's guess.