Free update vehicle pack for Mars Horizon on PC, plus future updates
/The next free update for Mars Horizon has landed! 🚀
The next of our free Mars Horizon updates is now available on on PC (Steam and GOG!) This time we’re bringing the Vega Rocket, Akari Satellite, and the Himawari Satellite to our game! Read on to learn more about these and why we are excited to bring them to Mars Horizon.
Once again we’d like to reassure console players that all content updates will be coming to PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch as well. We will give you updates about this when we can.
Future Mars Horizon updates! 👩🚀
We have more exciting things planned for the future that we will announce across our social, in our Discord, and to our Mars Horizon mailing list once we have more information to share. So make sure to follow us or sign up to be the first to hear about these. For now, we hope you enjoy taking on the space race with these all new vehicles.
Distant Observations Vehicle Pack
Platforms: Steam (Win and MacOS) & GOG (Win)
What are we adding and why?
This update is called 'Distant Observations' and features two observation payloads the Himawari and the Akari, plus ESA’s Vega rocket.
Small, versatile, and efficient — the Vega launch system is Europe’s way of launching light satellites to multiple orbits in a single launch. It's a cool addition to the game and looks spectacular standing on the launch pad ready for action.
The Himawari and Akari are both Japanese payloads but with very different purposes. Himawari series satellites provide data observations to support weather forecasting, where as the Akari was an infrared astronomy telescope designed to survey the entire sky and help further our understanding of the universe around us. It's neat to have one advanced observations payload pointing to earth, the other out into space!
This European rocket first launched in 2012. Vega is ideal for transporting payloads of 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) such as multiple small satellites, science missions, and Earth observation missions to a reference 700 km (430 mi) altitude polar orbit. Vega is a single body rocket with three stages based on solid fuel and a reignitable upper stage which uses liquid fuel and extends mission capability.
Vega is the smallest launch vehicle of the European rocket family. Seven European countries participated in its development: Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Vega is a programme managed by ESA, the European Space Agency. AVIO manufactures the Vega rocket, Arianespace provides the launch service from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
The Akari was originally intended to have a 550 day lifespan, it was launched in February 2006 into Earth sun-synchronous orbit, and was officially terminated in November 2011. During its operational period it achieved all of its goals and more, including detecting the first supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, observing star formation in Cygnus and Vulpecula, and detection of mass-loss from relatively young red-giant stars in the globular cluster NGC 104.
The Himawari satellites are mostly used by Asia, Australia and New Zealand in their weather forecasting but all are operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. As well as Earth bound meteorological events, later Himawari satellites have been able to acquire data from space weather using equipment for detecting high energy protons and electrons.
Since the first Himawari was launched in 1977 there have been three generations including GMS, MTSAT and Himawari 8 & 9 which are still in operation use today.