Free update Early Observations vehicle pack for Mars Horizon on PC, plus future updates
/It’s our first free update for Mars Horizon, but it won’t be our last 🚀
Thank you to everyone who has played Mars Horizon, streamed it, chatted to us in our Discord, and reviewed our game. Your support means everything to us!
Our first free Mars Horizon update has now landed on PC (Steam and GOG!) We’re bringing the SPOT Satellite mission and Rockets Nippon 1 and Nippon 2 to our game! Read on to learn more about these and why we are excited to bring them to Mars Horizon.
Don’t worry console players, 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.
Early Observations vehicle pack
Platforms: Steam (Win and MacOS) & GOG (Win)
SPOT Satellite mission
What are we adding and why?
We're adding the SPOT, which is an earth observation satellite used by the European Space Agency (ESA). The purpose of the SPOT series of satellites is to improve the knowledge and management of Earth by exploring the planet's resources, detecting and forecasting phenomena involving climatology and oceanography, and monitoring human activities and natural phenomena. Since the launch of SPOT 1 in 1986, the series of satellites have been providing high-resolution, wide area optical imagery for the European Space Agency (ESA) which it shares with its partners around the world. It's a great payload to use in Mars Horizon for earth observation missions, and also gives an ESA playthrough a little more flavour!
We decided to add the Nippon 1 and Nippon 2 because they were so fundamental in what would become the Japanese Space Agency's earlier successes. These liquid propellant rockets assisted Japan in launching satellites from the 1970's all the way up to the present day, and are perfect for undertaking low payload weight request missions in Mars Horizon in a Japan playthrough.
The "SPOT" series of observation satellites are named after its French acronym "Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre". Since 1986 they have been supplying scientists with high-resolution, wide-area imagery of our planet's surface.
All satellites in the SPOT series provide imagery in multi-colour and multispectral bands with a swath of 60 kilometers. This on-board machinery of the SPOT allows the gathering of data useful for applications such as creating maps, studying vegetation and land use coverage and also for monitoring the impact of natural disasters.
Conceived by the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) - SPOT satellites have been launched five times between 1986 and 2015. The most recent, SPOT 7, was launched in June 2014 and after forming a constellation with SPOT-7, it is hoped to provide high resolution, wide swath daya up until 2024.
The Nippon 1, otherwise known as the N-1, was a derivative of the American Thor-Delta rocket produced for JAXA under license. It consisted of a Long Tank Thor first stage, an LE-3 engine designed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for a second stage, and three Castor supplementary rockets.
Between 1975 and 1982, JAXA successfully launched six out of Nippon 1 rockets, the one accident caused by recontact between the payload and the third stage.
The Nippon 2, also known as the N-II or N-2, was produced under license in Japan based on the American Delta rocket. It replaced the Nippon 1 in Japanese use in 1981.
It consisted of a Thor-ELT first stage, a Delta-F second stage and on the majority of flights either a Star-37E or Burner-2 upper stage. The N-2 also had nine Castor supplementary rockets around the base of the booster.
Between 1981 and 1987 JAXA launched eight Nippon 2 rockets – each one a fully successful launch.