Planets

The starting planet Sylva.

Planets are astronomical bodies in Astroneer that the player may travel to, explore and construct bases on. Moons exist as well, but they share the same characteristics as planets, and are treated as such.

There are currently five planets, with two moons. These are, starting from the one closest to the Sun,  Atrox,  Calidor,  Sylva,  Vesania, and  Glacio. The moons,  Desolo and  Novus, orbit Sylva and Vesania, respectively.

Planets are generated upon creation of a new save based on a random seed, with 32,768 unique seeds available per each of the 7 planets. All planets have their own unique characteristics, with different types of Flora, Biomes, and Resources. Planets share the same universal resources, while all planets but Atrox have a Primary and a Secondary resource. A specific Primary and Secondary resource will exist on only two planets. Atrox is unique in having four atmospheric resources, with one being unique to the planet, while Desolo, having no atmosphere, has no atmospheric resources. Research Items and Samples are also different per planet, with different colors, amounts of bytes, and research times.

Planets have unique day/night cycles and power generation, with some planets being better for solar power, and others for wind power. The five planets (Atrox, Calidor, Glacio, Sylva, and Vesania) share the same size and gravity. On the other hand, Desolo and Novus have 1/2 the diameter of a planet, meaning that they have 1/8th of the volume.

Each planet has the same basic layout of five main layers: the surface, caves, mantle, outer core and inner core. Due to the generation of terrain, some caves can stretch from the surface to the outer core on certain planets, as well as some layers blending together without much distinction, such as on Desolo. Each planet also has an assortment of biomes covering its surface and interior.

Planets

Planet	Type	Primary	Secondary	Gases	Difficulty	Sun	Wind	Gateway Chamber Power Required	Gateway Symbol	Gateway Engine Material
Sylva	Terran	Sphalerite	Malachite	Hydrogen Nitrogen	Easy	Medium	Medium	5U/s		Quartz
Desolo	Terran Moon	Wolframite	Sphalerite	None	Easy	High	Low	8U/s		Zinc
Calidor	Arid	Malachite	Wolframite	Hydrogen Sulfur	Medium	Very High	Low	12U/s		Explosive Powder
Vesania	Exotic	Lithium	Titanite	Hydrogen Nitrogen Argon	Medium	Low	High	16U/s		Graphene
Novus	Exotic Moon	Hematite	Lithium	Hydrogen Methane	Medium	High	High	21U/s		Silicone
Glacio	Tundra	Titanite	Hematite	Argon	Hard	Very Low	Very High	26U/s		Diamond
Atrox	Radiated	None	None	Helium Methane Nitrogen Sulfur	Very Hard	Low	Low	30U/s		Hydrogen
Aeoluz	Glitch	None	None	All	Varies	Medium-Low	Medium	5U/s	N/A	N/A

• Primary resources are found between the first underground layer and the mantle of the planet. Secondary resources are found in mountainous biomes on the surface and the layers under the mantle to the outer core.

Planet Types

The Planets in Astroneer each have a type associated with them. Each type has varying differences, from the amount of sun to the types of resources that it may contain.

Type	Description	Planet
Terran	Typical lush, Earth-like planet, with plains, mountains, forested hills and gray-blue canyons.	Sylva
Terran Moon	Marked with craters, big and small. The occasional slightly raised mountains spaced between the gray landscape.	Desolo
Arid	Dry and dusty dunes, plantlife typical of a desert. Mesas and flat plains mixed in with the dunes.	Calidor
Exotic	Densely forested hills, heavy abundance of plantlife.	Vesania
Exotic Moon	Sparsely forested, with canyons and craters marking the surface.	Novus
Tundra	Cold and icy, with small hot spots of life, surrounded with tall glaciers, with steep drops to the icy plains below.	Glacio
Radiated	Toxic wastelands, with deep yellow canyons and tall, swiss cheese-like mountains. Abundance of hazardous plantlife and lacking any primary or secondary resources.	Atrox
Glitch	Created by Bl!tz. Features glitched regions that contain unique glitched Storms.	Aeoluz

Landing Zones

Landing zones are locations on each planet that a player may land on using a Shuttle. Landing zones are marked with either a sphere or a cylinder when viewed in orbit around the planet, depending on if it is natural or from a Landing Pad, allowing the player to select the zone to land in that location. Landing zones may only be occupied by one shuttle at a time. Moving a shuttle off of a landing zone can unlock it, allowing other shuttles to land there.

Spherical landing zones appear naturally at the start of the game, while cylindrical landing zones come from Landing Pads. In multiplayer, a passenger is also able to select a landing zone to land on, not only the person in the main seat. Some landing zones may also spawn very close to gateway chambers.

Notes

• Planets have a very high terrain build limit, allowing players to create bases far above the surface. However, flight, both in Creative Mode and from Solid-Fuel Jump Jet or Hydrazine Jet Pack, will not operate until the player is below a certain height, just above the cloud layer. Above this layer, players should be careful, as there is no gravity when far enough from the planet's surface (although gravity can still be applied if a planet passes close enough to where the player is in space), where items could be lost and the player could die from suffocation. The moons operate differently than the planets, and allow you to build all the way to other planets (ex. Desolo to Glacio), although it is highly advised to use a rover equipped with a thruster instead, due to the aforementioned hazards.

Trivia

• Parallels could be drawn between the characteristics of some planets and planets within the Solar System. Sylva and Desolo are similar to the Earth and the Moon respectively, Atrox has an atmosphere similar to that of Venus, Calidor is similar to Mars. Glacio could be based on the fact that Uranus and Neptune both have icy cores, or one of their frozen moons, such as Neptune's Triton, or dwarf planet Pluto. Vesania and Novus could be loosely based on Jupiter or Saturn's moons.
• The Gateway Chambers, when activated, show the shape of the symbol of the planet.
• When hovering over a planet, a tooltip is displayed showing the planet type (:ex: Atrox is a Radiated planet.) This is a reference to the previous names of those planets (ex: Radiated) that were present during early access.
• The default spawning seed is 343, several of the first employees of SES formerly worked at 343 Industries.

Media

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  Astroneer Solar System, not to scale

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  Planetary and Solar System Orientation Guide, not to scale.

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  Landing zones on Terran (Pre 1.0)