No Man's Sky's 10th anniversary Cosmos update overhauls space with orbital bases, station ownership

Hello Games has released Cosmos, the 10th anniversary update for No Man's Sky, and it is a complete overhaul of the space between planets, a part of the game the studio says has barely changed since launch. The update, out Wednesday September 9, adds orbital bases, player-owned space stations, alliances, space hulks to salvage, asteroid belts, and the long-teased ability to fly to the sun.

"No Man's Sky is often referred to as 'a Space Game'," Hello Games said in its Cosmos unveiling. "It's a huge part of our game, but we've never really updated space since release. In most sci-fi games, space is just an empty void. With Cosmos we wondered: can we make space feel truly alive? And could we make space feel more like home? What if you could own a space station? If you could build star bases, and create alliances with other players."

Station ownership is the centerpiece. Once a player purchases a station in a chosen solar system, they can decorate it inside and out and invite friends in, turning it into a personal headquarters or a gathering place. Players can also build free-floating modular bases anywhere in space, with Hello Games suggesting uses like a starship truck stop, a military outpost, or an orbital restaurant. Polygon notes players can establish alliances and work together to build networks of stations while competing on new leaderboards.

The update also fills space with new things to find. A new star map is packed with points of interest, and players can strip massive space hulks for salvage, fight off potential alien threats aboard them, and explore biological wrecks. Asteroid belts carry valuable resources, and some asteroids are large enough to land on and build a base. PCGamesN flags possible biohazard threats among the new content.

Cosmos arrives alongside a separate expedition called "Our Journey Continues!," which PCGamesN describes as a museum tour through each of the game's 40 major updates since launch. Both are available today.

The update caps a year in which Hello Games has already added a gravity gun that lets players rip debris out of wreckage and fling it, and a Pokémon-inspired monster-raising and battling system called Xeno Arena. Polygon notes the studio's steady stream of updates has transformed the game far beyond what it was at launch, and Cosmos is one of the biggest it has received yet, focused on the one part of the game that had stayed largely static.

No Man's Sky is available on Mac, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Full patch notes for the Cosmos update have been published by Hello Games.