Atmospheric Landing

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Atmospheric Landing is the conjectural name for Planetary Landing on planets and moons with atmospheres. The ability to land on worlds with tenuous atmospheres up to 0.1 atm was added with ED: Odyssey. It requires the Advanced Planetary Approach Suite module which replaces the Planetary Approach Suite.^[1] First Footfall is when you're the first person to land and disembark on an undiscovered planetary body.

Overview

A Cobra MkIII flying above an atmospheric world in ED: Odyssey

ED: Horizons added Planetary Landing to Elite Dangerous, allowing players to land on airless planets and moons with their ships and explore them via Surface Recon Vehicles and Ship-Launched Fighters. This opened vast new areas for exploration, but Planetary Landing excludes bodies with any type of atmosphere, or "Atmospheric Landing" on Terrestrial Planets, Metal-Rich Bodies, Ammonia Worlds, Water Worlds, and Gas Giants.

Planet with tenuous atmosphere

On June 3, 2020, Frontier Developments announced ED: Odyssey. The pre-alpha trailer confirmed Atmospheric Landing as a key feature. It was later clarified that Odyssey only permits landing on atmospheric planets with tenuous or thin atmospheres with a limit of 0.1 atm. Thus ED was improved to display atmospheric effects on applicable worlds, but the existing Planetary Landing flight model did not require a rework. A new flight model was unnecessary to portray aspects of atmospheric reentry such as aerodynamic heating and drag. Landing on tenuous atmosphere planets increased the total number of landable bodies in the galaxy by 20%.

Notable atmospheric planets

As of December 11, 3310, planet Phoo Chreou PX-L d7-61 holds the galactic record for the largest landable thin atmosphere in ED, with a radius of 14,372 km.^[2] It's quite a distance from Izanami. It was discovered by CMDR Smiler99.^[2]


Record holding atmospheric planet
Location:	Phoo Chreou PX-L d7-61^[2] ^[3]
Atmopshere Type:	Helium Radius: 14,372 km
Gravity:	2.01G
Surface Pressure:	0.07 atmospheres
Surface Temperature:	37K-73K
Earth Masses:	10.1988
Distance from Sol:	35,850LY
Discovered by:	CMDR Smiler99

The 2nd largest landable atmosphere is HIP 52349 16 at 13,793 km. It is also helium and 400 LY from The Bubble.^[2]

File:LARGEST Landable Atmosphere in Elite Dangerous (so far)-14,372km-

Development

On December 14, 2012, David Braben explained the development plan: “What I want to see down on the planet is interesting things, cityscapes, even animals, live trees, being a big game hunter. All of the things that we’ve been very ,very excited about for a long time, we want to be able to realize. The amount of work required to create those things is so huge we want to do it properly. What’s really important is we do each of these things really well. So that sort of thing won’t be included on day one. We don’t want it to be a dull experience where you just go down, you get essentially exactly the same experience wherever you land." “we’ve designed the game with that capability in mind going forward and at a later date we’ll gradually add more functionality to allow you to do that and the game’s richness will gradually increase."^[4]

Newsletter #29 confirms, "Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces," is a part of the development plans.^[5] Newsletter #32 confirms, "Major new features will include planetary landings and even walking around inside ships, stations, and planet surfaces with time."^[6]

In 2016, during an AMA with David Braben, this question was asked: "Is there a small team doing any preliminary work on atmosphere landing / walking (in stations etc) currently being looked at? As it is almost there for walking in station..." Braben said, "Yes. We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about and lots of other very exciting things for the future."^[7]

During a Charity Livestream, David Braben commented that atmospheric planets won't be coming "anytime soon".

On June 15, 2017, community manager Dale Emasiri wrote, "Having spoken to our team at E3, atmospheric landings remains something we are still working towards and the whole studio, including David, is very keen to implement. We'd like to be able to give you an idea of the rough timeframe for it, but unfortunately that’s not possible at the moment - we don’t want to make potentially empty promises to you."^[8]

On June 3, 2020, Frontier announced the ED: Odyssey expansion, which would enable landing on atmospheric planets and moons. It released on May 19, 2021.^[1]