7.0
September 9, 2026

No Man's Sky: COSMOS

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Welcome to the definitive guide to the COSMOS (Version 7.0) update for No Man’s Sky, released in celebration of the game’s 10-Year Anniversary.

This massive expansion completely reinvents deep-space exploration, introducing Space Station Directorship, free-floating Orbital Construction, Derelict Hulk shipbreaking, 6DoF Spacewalking, and a brand-new player-driven Galactic Alliances system.

To make browsing effortless, we have organized all guides into dedicated categories. Click any card in the overview below to open its full technical manual on your screen!

Expansion Overview

Space Station Directorship & Orbital Bases Guide - No Man's Sky COSMOS

🏢 Space Station Directorship & 🛸 Orbital Construction

The COSMOS (Version 7.0) update delivers two of the most requested features in the decade-long history of No Man’s Sky: the ability to acquire and direct Space Stations and freely build modular orbital bases in the void of deep space.


1. Space Station Directorship

What Is It?

Become the administrator and chief architect of an entire Space Station in a star system. The station becomes your primary faction headquarters and flagship base of operations.

How to Become a Station Director:

Acquiring directorship requires more than purchasing an item; you must prove your standing to the local authorities of the system’s dominant lifeform (Gek, Korvax, or Vy’keen):

  1. High Standing: Raise your reputation with the local species and space station guilds via the Mission Board.
  2. Local Contracts: Complete salvage missions, defense contracts, and freight deliveries within the system.
  3. Concession Contribution: Provide a substantial contribution/fee in Units (which can reach up to 1 Billion Units in wealthy, prosperous economies) at the Station Core.

What You Can Do as Director:

  • Interior Redecoration: Relocate, configure, and install furnishings, server racks, lighting rigs, and functional consoles within the central hub.
  • Hangar Office Extensions: Expand the station’s main hangar by snapping on pre-fabricated administrative offices and lounge suites.
  • Monumental Exterior Architecture: Unlock and bolt massive architectural rings, communication towers, and spires around the station’s outer hull.
  • Essential Services Intact: Core facilities (Technology Merchants, Ship Scrapper, Teleporter, and Galactic Trade Terminals) remain fully operational for all visiting Travellers.

2. Orbital Construction

What Is It?

Build residential, commercial, or military installations floating freely in the deep-space vacuum without relying on building glitches or proximity to planetary atmospheres.

How to Build a Base in Space:

  1. Acquire the Deep-Space Base Computer: Unlock the construction blueprint at the Construction Research Station aboard the Space Anomaly.
  2. Locate an Asteroid Platform or Clear Sector: Use the 3D Star System Map to locate an asteroid cluster platform or simply coast to a scenic sector of open space.
  3. Eject and Position the Base Computer: Exit your starship via Spacewalk or access the quick build menu to claim the space claim volume.
  4. Build with Specialized Space Modules: Utilize new pressurized corridor tubes, orbital airlocks, angular docking modules, and external gantry decks.

Practical Applications of Orbital Bases:

  • Deep-Space Waystations & Observation Lounges: Create scenic meeting hubs with panoramic vistas overlooking alien worlds.
  • Asteroid Mining Outposts: Anchor directly atop high-yield asteroid formations rich in rare materials such as Comet Dust and Condensed Stellar Ice.
  • Celestial Outposts: Construct sprawling modular complexes to host fleet meetups for your friends and alliance members.

Galactic Alliances Guide - No Man's Sky COSMOS (Update 7.0)

🚀 Galactic Alliances System

The COSMOS (Version 7.0) update introduces one of the most anticipated social and community frameworks in No Man’s Sky: Galactic Alliances. For the first time, Travellers can organize into formal coalitions within the game itself, linking claimed space stations and competing on a galactic territorial scale.


1. How to Join an Alliance

The process of affiliating with a Galactic Alliance is organic and open to all players:

  • Visit an Affiliated Station: Any player can enlist in an alliance simply by interacting with the Station Core inside a Space Station claimed by that alliance.
  • Frictionless Enlistment: No waiting for manual approvals or forum invites; simply walk up to the station’s central core console and select the join option.
  • Membership Limit: Each Traveller can be an active member of up to 3 alliances simultaneously.
  • Integrated Alliance Teleport Network: Joining an alliance unlocks a dedicated tab on every standard teleporter terminal, enabling instant travel between all star systems claimed across your allied network.

How to Found Your Own Alliance:

To create a new alliance, you must first earn Directorship over a neutral Space Station. At the Station Core of your claimed station, you can:

  1. Register the Official Name of your alliance.
  2. Designate a Unique Tag / Identifier (e.g., 4-character ticker).
  3. Customize the Alliance Banner, Emblem, and Color Scheme displayed across all affiliated stations in your sphere of influence.

2. Alliance Objectives & Purpose

Unlike the game’s traditional NPC alien factions (Gek, Korvax, Vy’keen, Merchants Guild, etc.), Galactic Alliances are player-founded and player-governed coalitions. Core alliance goals include:

  • Territorial Expansion: Claiming unassigned space stations to broaden your alliance’s teleportation web across uncharted sectors.
  • Community Infrastructure: Providing fortified outposts, trade depots, and decorated clubhouse hubs for allied members and visiting travellers.
  • Climbing Global Leaderboards: Competing for top positions on global classification boards featured at Station Cores throughout Euclid and beyond.
  • Coordinated Exploration: Linking portal networks so explorer wings can launch joint expeditions into remote deep-space coordinates.

3. How to Contribute to Alliance Growth and Rankings

Unlike MMOs where faction power rests on hoarded currencies or PvP kill counts, Galactic Alliance rankings in No Man’s Sky are driven directly by member exploration activity.

The alliance leaderboard tracks 5 core statistical categories:

Leaderboard Category How to Score Points Optimization Tip
Systems Discovered Make first contact in previously unmapped star systems. Perform long-range hyperdrive jumps toward remote outer galactic arms.
Stations Claimed Earn directorship over new space stations under your alliance’s banner. Complete local defense contracts and mission board objectives in candidate systems.
Plants Discovered Scan and catalogue planetary flora using your Analysis Visor. Deploy survey teams across diverse biomes to register new plant variants quickly.
Minerals Discovered Scan geological formations and resource deposits across multiple worlds. Equip S-Class Scanner Modules to register mineral classifications on the go.
Creatures Discovered Discover, scan, and upload indigenous planetary wildlife. Achieving 100% faunal discovery on a world awards significant bonus points.

💡 Core Takeaway: The Galactic Alliance system functions as an “exploration engine built into a social framework.” The more actively your members survey planets, catalogue species, and upload discoveries, the higher your alliance rises on the galactic leaderboards.

Space Salvage, Spacewalking & Derelict Hulk Shipbreaking - No Man's Sky COSMOS

🛰 Salvage Operations, Spacewalking & Deep-Space Outposts

The COSMOS (Version 7.0) update reinvents outer-space exploration by turning the void into a dynamic theater of industrial salvage, biological hazards, and realistic zero-gravity physics.


1. Deep-Space Derelict Hulk Shipbreaking

What Are Derelict Hulks?

Derelict Hulks are massive abandoned warship carcasses drifting in deep space, vastly dwarfing traditional derelict freighters in scale.

How Does the Salvage Loop Work?

  1. Gravitino Coil Tool: Equip this kinetic manipulator on your Multi-Tool (functional both aboard stations and in zero-G vacuum) to pry loose outer armor plating, propulsion coils, and structural modules from the hulk.
  2. Corvette Tractor Beam: Mount a Tractor Beam on your heavy Corvette. Fling stripped hull plates and tech pods toward your ship’s capture field so they are drawn in and processed into your cargo bays.
  3. Automated Cargo Compression: Colossal hull components drawn into the tractor beam are instantly compacted and refined to fit into your standard ship inventory.

⚠️ Core Meltdown Hazard

Derelict Hulks feature a dynamic Structural Integrity meter:

  • As you dismantle critical bulkheads and extract primary energy cores, overall structural stability steadily degrades.
  • If integrity reaches zero, a critical thermal meltdown timer (e.g., 3 minutes) begins counting down.
  • Golden Rule: Prioritize extracting the rarest technological caches first and boost away before catastrophic kinetic detonation destroys your ship and vaporizes unrefined salvage.

2. Advanced Spacewalking in Zero-G

  • Direct Ejection: Any pilot (regardless of starship class) can eject directly into the vacuum of space via the Quick Menu.
  • Full 6DoF Movement: Experience complete 6 Degrees of Freedom flight control, including axial roll, vertical strafing, pitch, and smooth inertial transitions.
  • Impulse Physics: Explosions, ricochets, and kinetic shockwaves in the vacuum exert authentic recoil vectors that knock your astronaut back.
  • Thermal Hazard Depletion: The void continuously siphons thermal protection from your Exosuit. Carry abundant ion batteries and take shelter near radiation pockets or incandescent exhaust vents to mitigate environmental damage.

3. Deep-Space Outposts & Bio-Wrecks

Inhabited Deep-Space Outposts

Small neutral outposts scattered across solar systems, staffed by alien Quartermasters:

  • Purchase navigation data charts and high-grade industrial alloys.
  • Accept salvage and retrieval missions at local consoles to bolster faction reputation and earn Units.
  • Refine unrefined raw ores such as Comet Dust and Contaminated Metal.

Infested Outposts (Bio-Wrecks)

Derelict facilities overtaken by aggressive fungal horrors and creeping biological corruption:

  • Require Multi-Tool weaponry and the Gravitino Coil to excise toxic pustules and viral sacs.
  • Extract rare biological compounds including Pathogen Sacs and Gelatinous Fibres.
  • Emit bio-frequencies that draw wild Living Ships from the Starbirth questline, which can be tracked using a reusable Dream Aerial.

Star System Map Navigation, Expedition 23 & Rewards - No Man's Sky COSMOS

🗺 3D System Map, Flying to the Sun & Anniversary Rewards

The COSMOS (Version 7.0) update celebrates the 10th Anniversary of No Man’s Sky with a complete overhaul of stellar navigation, graphical fidelity upgrades, and a milestone community expedition brimming with nostalgic rewards.


1. 3D Star System Map

Accessible directly from the Quick Menu whenever cruising in your starship outside planetary atmospheres:

  • Interactive 3D Representation: Displays the real-time orbital positions of all planets, moons, space stations, deep-space outposts, and asteroid belts in the current system.
  • Unidentified Signal Identification: Pinpoints derelict Hulks, anomalous space encounters, and permanent points of interest (POIs) that can be catalogued and revisited.
  • Automated Waypoint Assistance: Select any POI or celestial body on the 3D map to lock an automated navigation vector directly onto your starship HUD.
  • Unlocking the Map: System POIs begin populating on the 3D map once your save reaches the Space Anomaly for the first time (introduced during the tutorial mission Signals).

2. Direct Flight into Stellar Plasma (Reach The Sun)

For the first time in 10 years, the radiant stars positioned at the center of each solar system are no longer distant unreachable skybox sprites — they are physical spheres of superheated plasma:

  • You can point your starship towards the center of the system and engage pulse speed to fly directly into the sun.
  • Lethal Radiation Warning: Approaching the stellar surface causes catastrophic thermal drain on your deflector shields, culminating in vessel destruction if safe flight margins are exceeded.

3. 10-Year Milestone Expedition: “Our Journey Continues” (Expedition 23)

A celebratory milestone expedition structured as a “playable museum” tracing the game’s evolutionary milestones:

  • Each milestone stage commemorates one of the 40+ major free content updates released since 2016.
  • Developer Voice Logs: Unlocking milestones rewards players with exclusive developer commentary recordings by Sean Murray, recounting behind-the-scenes stories and technical challenges from that era of development.

Flagship Expedition Rewards:

  1. Golden Rasamama S36: An exclusive, gold-leaf commemorative edition of the iconic starting starship from the 2016 launch.
  2. Starbound v0.27 Multi-Tool: A retro concept model based directly on pre-launch development art.
  3. Diplodocus Companion Pet: The iconic giant dinosaur featured in the legendary 2014 debut trailer, fully re-textured and animated.
  4. Vintage Sentinel Interceptor: Classic Sentinel patrol fighter inspired by early game builds.
  5. Astronaut Bobblehead: Nostalgic decorative dashboard accessory for your cockpit.
  6. Commemorative Update Art Prints: Framed concept and cover artwork sets to furnish your planetary and orbital bases.

4. Twitch Drops Integration

During the launch celebration window, Travellers can unlock rare and commemorative cosmetics simply by tuning into eligible No Man’s Sky Twitch livestreams:

  • Eligible Rewards: Exotic base building parts, customized starships, high-tier Multi-Tools, companion creature eggs, celebration fireworks, and unique character appearance modifications.
  • How to Claim: Link your platform account (Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch) at the official Hello Games cloud portal (cloud.nomanssky.com/twitch). Claimed items synchronize to your cloud profile and can be redeemed from the Space Anomaly Quicksilver merchant even if you start a new save later.