No Man’s Sky COSMOS (7.0) Explained: Orbital Bases, Space Hulks and Your Own Station

No Man’s Sky COSMOS (7.0) is Hello Games’ free 10th-anniversary update, released 9 September 2026, and it rebuilds space itself around salvageable space hulks, free-floating orbital bases, and — for the first time since the game’s 2016 launch — a space station a player can actually own. Hello Games calls it “one of our biggest and craziest” updates, and confirms “it’s our 7.0 update and it’s free to download now for all existing players across every platform.” The update covers a star map of new points of interest, derelict hulks, trading outposts, biological hazard sites, buildable asteroids, orbital bases, station directorship, player alliances, and a tie-in expedition marking 40 updates since launch.

Warping into a system now typically starts with a scan of the new star map, which reveals a spread of space points of interest that unlock fresh mission and exploration threads. The official patch notes elaborate that this map adds rocky and icy asteroid belts, inhabited and infested deep-space outposts, procedurally-generated hulks, debris fields, and asteroid platforms as discoverable markers.

Cosmos costs nothing on top of owning the game: it’s a free download for every existing player. Hello Games’ own Cosmos page lists the full platform spread as PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 1, Switch 2, Mac, PSVR 1&2, PC VR, and Xbox Game Pass, and the game’s baseline cross-play and cross-save carries across all of them.

There’s no separate download beyond the platform’s usual update, but the new space content does not simply appear when you warp. Per the patch notes, points of interest begin to appear on the star system map once a save has reached the Space Anomaly for the first time — so on a save that has never summoned the Anomaly, do that first. The map itself opens from the Quick Menu and shows the local celestial bodies, the space station and the deep-space points of interest; a light tutorial mission, Signals, introduces the map and navigation between them. From there: pick a marker in any system and fly to it.

Two things to have before the first salvage run. Hulk work happens outside the ship, and spacewalking drains the exosuit’s cold-protection technology unless you happen to be next to another hazard, so top it up before an EVA. Hauling the physical cargo home needs the Tractor Beam — a Corvette utility part bought at the Corvette Workshop in space stations, not a fitting for a regular starship, so a Corvette is part of the kit.

The anniversary expedition is a separate thing to wait for. Expedition Twenty-Three, “Our Journey Continues!”, ties each of its 40 milestones to a major update since 2016, with a spacelog and developer commentary read by Sean Murray at every stop. The official notes say it “will begin shortly and run for approximately six weeks”; as of 15 September 2026 there is no start announcement on nomanssky.com, and players in the first days after launch found the terminus still showing the prior season. Announced, not live, until Hello Games posts the date.

Orbital construction isn’t a brand-new toolset bolted on top of the game — the full patch notes describe deploying a deep-space base computer to claim a volume of space, then building with the same range of existing base parts already available for redecorating a station’s interior. The parts come through the usual route: the notes say the new station decoration parts are unlockable from the Construction Research Terminal aboard the Space Anomaly, and that terminal takes Salvaged Data per blueprint — so for a builder the real cost of Cosmos is a longer research tree, not the base computer itself. Corvettes, the modular multi-crew ships added in Voyagers on 27 August 2025 and built from hundreds of ship modules, also intersect with the new station system: Cosmos’s patch notes specifically fix Corvettes being unable to land in the Space Station and the Anomaly, alongside ramp-state and pilot-seat exit issues near large space objects.

Becoming a station director requires “proving yourself to the local authorities,” a phrase Hello Games and the fuller patch notes use without spelling out the exact meter behind it. Community guides not affiliated with Hello Games describe that requirement in concrete terms — a set alien race reputation, five deep-space salvage contracts, and roughly 1 billion units — but none of those figures appear in the official patch notes, so they are community reporting, not confirmed numbers, and they are not a basis for estimating how long the claim takes. Until Hello Games publishes the requirement, treat directorship as a goal of unknown length rather than a shopping list.

Update to 7.02 before spending real time on stations, orbital bases or hulks. Patch 7.01, out on 10 September 2026 — the day after Cosmos — fixed geometry issues with new base parts, station decoration going missing in Korvax-controlled stations, and exterior decorations that wouldn’t unlock correctly after purchase. Patch 7.02, posted 15 September and live on Steam first with other platforms pending, fixes the Deep-Space Base Computer being placeable for free, duplicated props inside a claimed station, invisible collision spheres on exterior station decoration, gravity misbehaving on planetary base parts — and, for salvagers, lets you return to the remains of a completed space hulk. Treat both hulk-stripping and bio-wreck clearing as risk mechanics rather than bugs: the meltdown chance on hulks and the hazard warning on bio-wrecks are stated as intended parts of the loop. And because the exact resource quantities for an orbital base beyond the base computer aren’t listed in the official notes, budget salvage runs generously rather than assuming a fixed shopping list.

Sources and Confidence

Four labels. Official — Hello Games’ own patch notes or posts. Checked in-game — we ran it ourselves. Community report — players or third-party guides. Not yet verified — announced, but with nothing to check against yet. No claim in this article has been checked in-game so far.