No Man’s Sky Reinvents Deep-Space Exploration With the Cosmos Update

Hello Games has released Cosmos, the enormous Update 7.0 for No Man’s Sky. The expansion fundamentally changes how players interact with space by introducing controllable space stations, player alliances, orbital construction, dangerous shipbreaking operations and a new navigation system filled with persistent points of interest.

Space is no longer intended to function primarily as the distance between two planets. Star systems now contain more structured destinations to discover, revisit and exploit, including asteroid belts, deep-space outposts, debris fields, abandoned hulks, natural orbital platforms and mysterious signals.

The update also celebrates the tenth anniversary of No Man’s Sky with Expedition Twenty-Three: Our Journey Continues. This commemorative adventure takes players through milestones inspired by the game’s transformation since its original launch, offering nostalgic rewards based on early trailers and concept artwork.

Cosmos is listed for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, as well as Xbox Game Pass.

Space Is Finally Becoming a Destination

No Man’s Sky has always offered an enormous procedurally generated universe, but much of its activity has historically been concentrated on planets, freighters, settlements and space stations. The space between those locations was visually impressive, yet it frequently acted as a corridor players crossed on the way to something else.

Cosmos attempts to correct that imbalance by giving each star system a more coherent network of deep-space locations. Rocky and frozen asteroid belts, inhabited outposts, infested structures, wreckage fields, orbital platforms and procedurally generated ship hulks can now appear as persistent points of interest.

These locations do not simply disappear after an encounter. Hello Games says they occupy fixed, revisitable positions, giving individual systems a stronger geographical identity. A valuable asteroid belt, a dangerous wreck or a useful outpost can become part of a player’s regular route rather than a temporary random event.

The update even allows sufficiently determined Travellers to fly directly toward a system’s star. These stars are now reachable through long-distance flight, although their extreme heat makes approaching them a spectacular and potentially lethal experiment.

This is an important conceptual change for the game. Cosmos makes the void itself part of exploration, allowing a star system to feel like a connected environment rather than a group of planets separated by loading-free travel.

A New Star System Map Charts the Void

Managing these expanded systems requires better navigation, and Update 7.0 introduces an interactive Star System Map accessible through the Quick Menu. It displays planets, the local space station and discovered deep-space locations within the current system.

Players can select a celestial body or point of interest and activate navigational assistance, making it easier to return to previously discovered sites. Unidentified signals can also appear on the map, encouraging Travellers to investigate locations whose purpose has not yet been established.

Deep-space points of interest become available after a save has reached the Space Anomaly for the first time. Hello Games has also added a lightweight tutorial mission called Signals to introduce the map and its navigation systems.

The new interface should make exploration more deliberate. Instead of relying exclusively on chance encounters while using the pulse engine, players can examine the structure of a system, choose a destination and establish repeatable routes between useful locations.

Asteroid belts provide one example of how this expanded structure affects normal play. They can contain rare minerals and unusual crystals, but valuable deposits may also attract miners, merchants and outlaws. Locations therefore operate as gathering points for activity rather than isolated collections of resources.

Players Can Take Control of Space Stations

One of the largest additions is the ability to become director of a functioning space station. Players must first prove themselves to the relevant local authorities, after which they receive control over substantial parts of the station’s design.

Directors can customise the central lobby, reposition or remove existing decorations, construct additional rooms connected to the main hangar and use the broader collection of base-building pieces to reshape the interior. The exterior can also be modified with enormous decorative modules designed specifically for stations.

The system effectively combines base construction with one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the game. A planetary base can be impressive, but a customised station occupies the centre of a system’s transport and economic network. It can become a recognisable public destination encountered by other Travellers.

Hundreds of station decoration pieces have been added to support that level of customisation. Many can be unlocked through the Construction Research Terminal aboard the Space Anomaly, while rare blueprints may be obtained by investigating deep-space anomalies.

Station construction is also linked to the new salvage economy. Materials recovered from deep space can be processed, sold or retained for use when personalising a station’s exterior. This gives ownership a practical progression loop beyond rearranging furniture and selecting decorative themes.

Galactic Alliances Introduce Organised Communities

Station directors can establish Galactic Alliances, choosing a name and designing a banner to represent the group across the universe. Other players can join an alliance by visiting one of its controlled space stations, and every Traveller can belong to as many as three alliances simultaneously.

Members receive convenient access to alliance systems through teleporters, making it easier to coordinate exploration, construction and community activity. Alliances are evaluated according to factors including population, activity and territorial reach.

The most successful organisations will appear on leaderboards accessible from the core of a space station. This adds a more formal social structure to No Man’s Sky without turning territorial expansion into traditional direct warfare.

The exact long-term competitive consequences of alliance territory remain to be seen. The official documentation emphasises collaboration, activity and expansion rather than destructive conquest. It appears designed to reward organised communities for building an interstellar presence, not to let them erase another group’s progress.

Nevertheless, alliances introduce a visible measure of influence to a universe where most player communities have previously organised themselves through external tools or informal hubs. Their effectiveness will depend on how clearly territory is measured and whether the system provides compelling objectives after the initial race for leaderboard positions.

Build a Permanent Home in Orbit

Cosmos also removes the requirement to place every conventional base on a planetary surface. Players can deploy a deep-space base computer, claim an empty volume of space and begin constructing a free-floating orbital habitat.

Natural rock formations and asteroid platforms can serve as foundations, but construction is also possible in open space. New corridor components have been introduced specifically for orbital builds, while the larger base-building catalogue remains available for more elaborate creations.

This gives builders an opportunity to create stations, industrial complexes, observation platforms or entire celestial cities outside a planet’s atmosphere. Because these structures can exist alongside the update’s asteroid fields, hulks and outposts, their surrounding environment becomes an important part of the design.

The feature complements station directorship without replacing it. Personal stations operate as major public infrastructure tied to alliances, while orbital bases offer the flexibility and creative freedom associated with traditional construction. Players can therefore control a functional station while maintaining a separate home or industrial facility in deep space.

Shipbreaking Adds High-Risk Salvage Operations

Derelict hulks are among the update’s most dangerous new locations. These gigantic shipwrecks contain narrow corridors, forgotten cargo and salvageable technology, but their damaged structures can become unstable as players dismantle them.

Removing components reduces hull integrity and can trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. Salvage crews must decide which materials are worth taking and when it is time to escape, creating a risk-and-reward loop in which greed can turn a successful operation into an explosion.

The activity requires players to leave their spacecraft and navigate the wreck through enhanced spacewalking controls. Once useful salvage has been separated from the structure, it can be physically transported instead of instantly converted into an abstract inventory item.

Corvette owners can install a new Tractor Beam purchased from the Corvette Workshop at space stations. The beam collects physical minerals and wreckage into the ship’s cargo hold, refining objects that are too large to store normally. Players can use the Gravitino Coil to launch salvage toward the beam before carrying the recovered material to another destination.

Cargo can then be transported to a deep-space outpost, sold through the Galactic Trade Network or processed into materials used for station construction. Corvette tractor systems can also jettison their collected cargo, although Hello Games jokingly advises against using the automated venting system on sentient objects.

The result is a complete industrial gameplay cycle: locate a wreck, enter it through extra-vehicular activity, dismantle valuable sections without causing an early collapse, extract physical cargo, transport the haul and decide whether to sell it or invest it in a station.

Deep-Space Outposts Create New Economic Hubs

Alien-controlled outposts now occupy remote areas of inhabited systems. Each is managed by a quartermaster who trades maps and salvaged materials, while a dedicated terminal provides recovery and delivery contracts.

Completing these assignments earns standing and additional rewards. The outposts also process unusual resources gathered at other deep-space locations, including comet dust, contaminated metal and gelatinous fibres.

Not every outpost is safe. Some have been overrun by a biological infestation that covers rooms and passageways with a spreading alien substance. Players can use the Gravitino Coil to clear the obstruction and recover pathogen sacs, fibres and other valuable samples.

These locations connect the update’s exploration, combat, logistics and economic systems. They provide reasons to revisit space after the novelty of discovering a hulk or asteroid field has passed, while also creating natural destinations for players operating salvage-focused Corvettes.

Spacewalking Is Now Available to Every Pilot

Leaving a ship in open space is no longer restricted to players commanding a Corvette. An eject option in the Quick Menu allows pilots of other spacecraft to exit and perform extra-vehicular activity.

Movement has been expanded to six degrees of freedom, including the ability to roll. Transitions between free-floating movement and landing on objects with gravity have also been improved.

Spacewalking remains hazardous. Cold protection systems are gradually drained while exposed to the void, and explosions can physically knock Travellers backwards. Nearby sources of heat can affect the environmental danger, although approaching a star to stay warm is unlikely to be a sensible survival strategy.

Opening extra-vehicular activity to all pilots is significant because many of Cosmos’ core destinations are designed around leaving the cockpit. Players do not need to own an advanced Corvette before they can investigate deep-space structures, even though the larger ship and its Tractor Beam will make industrial salvage considerably more efficient.

Ten Years of No Man’s Sky in One Expedition

Expedition Twenty-Three, Our Journey Continues, commemorates ten years of No Man’s Sky. The event is expected to run for approximately six weeks, although Hello Games describes it as beginning “shortly” rather than attaching a precise start time to the initial patch notes.

Every milestone represents an important update or moment from the game’s history. Developer commentary read by Hello Games founder Sean Murray accompanies those milestones, sharing production stories and anecdotes from different stages of the project. Unlocked recordings remain permanently accessible through the Collected Knowledge section of the Catalogue.

The reward selection draws heavily from the game’s past. Players can obtain commemorative artwork based on major update covers, titles, decals, the Starbound v0.27 Multi-Tool derived from early concept art and a golden version of the original Rasamama S36 starship.

Other rewards recreate elements seen before release, including a vintage Sentinel Interceptor, an astronaut cockpit figurine and a newly textured and animated diplodocus companion inspired by early No Man’s Sky footage.

The expedition is more than an anniversary checklist. It presents the game’s development history as playable content, acknowledging both its difficult launch and the remarkable sequence of updates that followed.

Major Visual and Performance Improvements

Update 7.0 includes extensive technical work alongside its headline features. Terrain tessellation has been improved to provide greater ground detail, while planetary clouds receive better textures, lighting, shapes and atmospheric colouring when viewed from space.

Transparent objects, particles and volumetric fog can now react more naturally to dynamic lighting. Deep-space hulks use new electrical effects, mist, debris, smoke and biological slime to create a more oppressive atmosphere during salvage operations.

Asteroid generation has been reworked to improve draw distance, visual distribution and performance. Hello Games has also adjusted water, foam, planetary fog, HDR colour handling, lens flares, ship trails and the appearance of planets at long range.

PC players receive support for Intel XeSS 3 and NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, including higher Frame Generation multipliers on compatible hardware. PCVR gains support for eye-tracked foveated rendering.

Under-the-hood optimisation targets inventories, multiplayer latency, settlements, base loading, procedural generation, animation and memory usage. Console file handling has been improved, with Hello Games reporting load-time reductions of approximately six to nine percent, while optimised mesh data reduces mesh file sizes by roughly thirteen percent.

Cosmos Expands the Game in a Coherent Direction

Cosmos is not merely a collection of unrelated activities. Its largest features form a connected progression structure. The Star System Map reveals persistent destinations; those destinations contain resources and dangerous salvage opportunities; outposts turn recovered materials into profit; stations and orbital bases provide somewhere meaningful to invest them; and alliances connect those creations to organised multiplayer communities.

The update’s success will depend on the depth of station management and alliance progression after players complete their first constructions. Even so, the underlying direction is clear. Hello Games is converting deep space from scenery into playable territory.

A new Twitch Drops campaign accompanies the launch from September 10 through September 14. Eligible streams provide base parts, starships, Multi-Tools, creatures, appearance items and other rewards. Drops can even be earned before purchasing No Man’s Sky, provided they are properly claimed and the relevant platform account is connected for later redemption.

Ten years after release, No Man’s Sky is once again reshaping one of its foundational systems. Cosmos makes the universe between planets more navigable, more dangerous and far more useful—and gives Travellers the tools to claim a permanent place among the stars.