This Guide assumes you are already familiar with the basics of orbital mining in Stars End
If not please check out Behemoose's excellent
Beginners Guide to Orbital Mining.

Since the release of Update #12 players have been able to mine Uranium and other materials from asteroids in any available ship. With the addition of a Vehicle Weapon Slot, a Vehicle Mining Beam can be added.
For this guide i chose to use the Frigate, just because its a fine looking ship and i like to fly it :)


The Vehicle Mining Beam can be crafted or purchased from Vehicle Parts vendors at various locations.
I tried my best to measure the range of the beam, (difficult with the only visible fixed point being on the planet) I were able to harvest approximately 3.5KM ! away

Asteroids drop around 10 items, same as the Space Junk no matter the size of the roid.. Uranium, Platinum, Quartz and Copper. After a 2 hour mining session i had almost the same amount of each in my inventory, with Platinum being at the top but only slightly.

As with the Nova when mining space junk you can use Q,E SPACE and CTRL to manoeuvre your craft between close grouped asteroids to save on fuel , it also does't take too long to reach the asteroid layer around Nox from the surface just using SPACE, again no fuel used.

With the Vehicle Mining Beam having a really good range, just try the asteroids around you. Difficult to see if its made contact but you will soon know if it starts to drop.

To speed up the travel time between distant asteroids, i line up my ship with the asteroid i'm going to, tap C to enter cruise speed then tap X to cut the ignition just before i hit the asteroid ..

Total travel time from stationary with ignition on, to stationary with ignition off and mining again was 4 Seconds !!

As with all loot and materials gathered in Stars End, once collected will be deposited in your personal inventory so be prepared to be seriously encumbered when exiting your craft :)
Ship cargo holds are now in, so you can transfer your ore to there if needed.

Some of the asteroids in open space are colossal and look much closer than they actually are, make sure to take spare fuel with you !

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Beta Prairie the starter planet seems to be unique as it has both a Space Junk layer and a relatively close Asteroid layer. Although the asteroids are quite far apart.
As can be seen in the images, the Space Junk layer lies at about 60-80km up while the Asteroid layer lies at around 90-100km.
There are Asteroids further out but these are the same as can be found anywhere in open space.


The green jewel of the heavens. This planet has a Space Junk layer which lies at around 30-40km up but no Asteroid layer as such.

I tried to keep perpendicular to the spaceport and the first Asteroid i came to was over 500km out.





The miners paradise. Nox has no Space Junk layer and it really does not need one, as this is by far the best place to mine asteroids. With the Asteroid layer at only 10km or so up, they are also much closer together than anywhere else and can be found in groups of 3 or 4 at a time.

I realise a lot of what is in this guide will probably change as the game itself grows and will do my best to keep on top of any relevant changes.

Only 3 planets have been added at this point to the Planet Summary section, again this will be added to as other playfields are opened up within the game.

Lift off! Explore and have fun

Thank you for taking the time to read and i hope it helps in some small way :)

Finally, a BIG Thank You to the Stars End team for keeping hard at it :)

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