No Man's Sky Solar Ship Guide: Free Launch Fuel and S-Class Hunting

The solar ship is No Man’s Sky’s quality-of-life specialist: a striking, sail-winged hull that quietly deletes one of the game’s oldest chores. Since the earliest days, every planetfall has ended the same way, with you topping up launch fuel or wincing as the tank creeps toward empty. Solar ships, introduced in the Outlaws update of April 2022 (version 3.85), recharge their own launch thrusters through their sails while they fly. Land, hop out, build a base, come back a week later, and the takeoff is already paid for.

That single trait, plus competitive stats and one of the most distinctive silhouettes in the game, has kept solars in every “which ship should I fly” conversation since. This guide covers how the sail works, where solars spawn, the practical ways to land an S-class, the parts catalogue, and an honest comparison against fighters and explorers.

Last updated: August 18, 2026. The solar ship’s mechanics have been essentially frozen since the Outlaws update, and nothing in the 2026 patch cycle has touched them as of this writing. Stats below follow current community wiki documentation; if the staged Cosmos update changes anything relevant, this guide will be revised alongside our 2026 update tracker.

What Is a Solar Ship?

A solar ship is a high-tech starship class with extendable solar sails that deploy automatically during flight. Hello Games shipped them in the Outlaws update with, in the official patch notes’ words, “unique technologies for a fast and efficient Pulse Engine,” spread across a wide range of procedurally generated variations. They can technically appear anywhere in the galaxy, but they are dramatically more common in the pirate-controlled outlaw systems that arrived in the same update, and that pairing is no accident: solars are the outlaw fleets’ signature hull.

Four things define the class in practice:

• The Vesper Sail. Every solar carries this exclusive engine technology, which boosts pulse performance and, critically, enables automatic recharging of the launch system from flight. It cannot be bought separately or installed on any other class.
• A small inventory, always. Solars spawn only in the small inventory tier, roughly 24 to 30 cargo slots with 13 to 18 tech slots, upgradeable to a 110-slot cargo ceiling like other modern ships. This is the class’s one real weakness.
• High maneuverability. The same agility band as fighters and explorers, which makes them pleasant to fly and perfectly usable in a scrap.
• A pirate-flavored acquisition loop. You will be spending time in outlaw systems, with their black markets, bounty brokers, and complete absence of space police.

They are piloted, traded in, and scrapped like any other ship, which already puts them ahead of Living Ships in flexibility. Our ship class rankings slot them as the smart daily driver rather than an endgame specialist, and that framing holds up under the numbers.

How the Solar Sail Works: Launch Fuel You Never Craft

Launch fuel is the quiet tax on every landing in No Man’s Sky. A standard takeoff burns 25% of the launch thruster tank (doubled in Survival and Permadeath), and until you install workarounds, refilling it means crafting launch fuel or feeding the thrusters ferrite dust and di-hydrogen, forever.

The solar ship’s answer is the Vesper Sail, described in-game as a high-performance solar sail that generates an electric field within the sails themselves, letting the ship build momentum from the solar wind while enabling “photovoltaic recharge of the starship’s launch systems.” In plain terms: takeoffs still cost launch fuel at the standard rate, but while you fly, whether cruising atmosphere, boosting across a continent, or pulsing between planets, the sail pours that fuel back in. One pulse jump between planets is typically enough to arrive with a full tank, which is why solar owners simply stop thinking about launch fuel within an hour of buying one.

The sail carries three more bonuses on top, per the community wiki’s documented figures: roughly +80% pulse drive fuel efficiency, +15% boost, and +11% maneuverability. That combination is why solars are widely credited with the best pulse engine performance of any ship class: they pulse faster for longer on the same tritium, and they do it while refueling themselves.

Be precise about what the sail is not. It is not the Launch Auto-Charger, an upgrade any ship can install that trickles 4% per minute back into the tank, but only during daylight while parked. It is not the Efficient Thrusters upgrade, which cuts launch cost by 20% but still leaves you crafting fuel. Those are slow patches on the problem; the sail deletes the problem. It is also not transferable: scrap a solar and the Vesper Sail does not come out as a reusable part for your fighter.

Where to Find Solar Ships: Outlaw Systems 101

Solars follow the same ambient-spawn rules as every NPC ship: they land at space stations and trading posts, and you buy them from the pilot. What changes is the mix. Community-documented spawn rules state that every system reserves slots for seven shuttle designs, and a solar ship has an 85% chance to replace a shuttle in outlaw systems versus a 10% chance everywhere else. In an ordinary system, solars are rare enough that players mistake them for exotics. In an outlaw system, they are most of what lands.

Finding outlaw systems is its own small skill:

1. Fit a scanner. The Outlaws patch notes specify that outlaw systems are identified on the galaxy map with a Conflict or Economy scanner, both standard starship technology. Buy either from a station technology merchant if your ship lacks them.
2. Read the map. Outlaw systems show no economy rating where a normal system lists wealth tiers, with pirate authority instead of Gek, Korvax, or Vy’keen factions. That missing economy line is the tell.
3. Expect the scenery to change. Outlaw stations have their own NPCs, a Bounty Master handing out piracy missions, black market traders selling contraband, and a technology merchant specializing in “suspicious aftermarket upgrades” (X-class modules, more on those below). There are no Sentinel authorities patrolling the space.
4. Plan your route. One documented quirk from the patch notes: outlaw stations cannot be warped to directly from regulated stations, and vice versa. Budget an extra hop through open space when crossing between pirate territory and civilized space.

Once docked, the hunting loop is the same one ship hunters have run for years. Every system has a fixed pool of ship designs generated from its seed, so a system whose early landing waves include solar designs will keep producing them on every visit and reload, while each ship’s class and stats re-roll every time it lands. Park at a station or trading post, watch what lands, and reload your save to shuffle the dice; the first wave after a reload is the efficient one to check.

A note for multitaskers: outlaw systems are also the heart of the smuggling loop. Contraband bought cheap at a pirate station sells at a fat markup in regulated space, and bounty missions pay well, so a solar-hunting trip usually funds itself. The pirate life pairs naturally with squadron recruitment and a freighter, both covered in our freighter guide.

How to Get an S-Class Solar

There are three legitimate routes to a max-class solar, in increasing order of effort.

Route 1: Hunt the 5%. Spawn-class odds follow the system’s economy, and outlaw systems have their own row in the table: roughly 85% C-class, 5% B, 5% A, 5% S. That flat 5% S-class chance is more than double the 2% of a wealthy economy, which makes outlaw systems arguably the best S-class hunting grounds in the game, counterintuitive as that feels. Run the loop described above until an S-class touches down; at 5%, expect roughly one per twenty ships, and every roll is independent.

Route 2: Buy low, upgrade the class. Any solar, including a cheap C-class, can be raised through the classes at the Starship Outfitting Terminal on a space station, re-rolling stats upward within the class band while slot expansions ride along via Storage Augmentations. You trade units for the guarantee that would otherwise be dice, and since a solar you love the look of is worth more than a random S you tolerate, plenty of hunters buy the body they want and pay to make it strong.

Route 3: Fabricate exactly what you want. Since the Orbital update, solars can be built from scratch at a Starship Fabricator. The recipe is pleasingly literal: one solar body, one wing, one sail, and a reactor core. Parts come from scrapping salvaged solars, and the core’s class sets the finished ship’s class, so an S-class core bought from a starship technology merchant hands you a guaranteed S-class in precisely the parts and colors you chose. Exotics, Living Ships, and Sentinel interceptors cannot be fabricated at all, which quietly makes solars the most customizable huntable class in the game.

For the general first-wave farming discipline, reload etiquette, and slot economics, our S-class ship guide covers the loop class-agnostically, and the exotic ship locations guide teaches the portal-and-glyph pipeline if you would rather portal directly to a community-documented solar than shop system by system.

Parts, Colors, and the Cockpit View

Solar ships are built from a fixed parts catalogue, and knowing it makes coordination trading vastly easier, because the community names every part. Per the community-maintained Solar Parts Catalogue:

Slot	Options
Body shape (6)	Raven, Arachnid (Spider), Marlin, Falcon, Turbofan Fuselage (Grouper), Jackal
Sail (3)	Hex, Crescent, Rectangle
Wing (6)	Razor, Shielded, Double Blade, Starburst, Talon, Grapple
Wing tip (5)	Horza, Verta, Tristar, Torpedo, Drill
Sail colour (8)	Green, gold, purple, cyan, red, white, orange, blue

Every attribute is independent, hull colours come in painted and metallic undercoats, and the body shape sets the whole carapace, nose to boosters. The design space is enormous, which is why the community trade in solars as 12-glyph portal addresses plus a parts description, the same convention used for exotics.

Two aesthetic truths worth knowing before you fall in love at a trading post:

The sail animation is the point. Sails fold out automatically during flight and glow in their chosen colour. Most owners spend more time in third person in a solar than in any other ship, and it is easy to see why.

First-person visibility is the class’s sore spot. The same sails that look so good from outside sit partly in the pilot’s sightline from the cockpit. They are semi-transparent, but community threads describe the view through them as murky, and some first-person pilots find certain body shapes genuinely obstructive. If you fly exclusively in first person, inspect a solar’s cockpit view before buying, or lean toward body shapes whose sails sit lower or further outboard; third-person flyers can ignore this paragraph entirely.

Since ship customization arrived, you can also scrap ships for parts and rebuild your dream solar at the fabricator, mixing any body, sail, wings, and tips into one hull, then painting it. The catalogue above is effectively the menu.

Solar Ship Stats: How It Compares

Current community wiki data puts the class in perspective next to its nearest rivals. All figures are S-class type bonuses; base hyperdrive range starts at 101 light-years for everyone before bonuses and upgrades multiply in.

	Solar	Fighter	Explorer	Exotic
Maneuverability	High (387.5–445)	Very High (387.5–445)	High (387.5–445)	High (387.5–445)
S-class damage bonus	+60–75%	+70–90%	No bonus	+50–75%
S-class shield bonus	+23–50%	+24–38%	+30–40%	+70–90%
S-class hyperdrive bonus	+38–50%	+35–45%	+90–120%	+75–95%
Launch cost per takeoff	25%, self-refilled	25%	12.5%	25%
Inventory	Small only (24–30 cargo)	Small to large	Small to large	Small only (24–30 cargo)

Read as a fighter: a solar gives up a little top-end damage in exchange for never touching launch fuel and pulsing meaningfully cheaper. Read as an explorer: no contest at range, because an explorer’s hyperdrive bonus is double or triple a solar’s, and explorers also take off on half the launch fuel. Read as an exotic: the exotic wins on shields and warp range by wide margins, but cannot be fabricated to order, so the solar is the customizer’s trophy.

The verdict our best ships rankings landed on survives the numbers: solars are competitive-but-not-exceptional stat sticks whose real selling points are behavioral. No launch fuel, the game’s best pulse engine, high agility, and a look nobody else has.

Outfitting a Solar Ship

Solars are conventional technology ships, so outfitting follows the standard playbook. Buy S-class upgrade modules from station technology merchants for your pulse engine, weapons, shields, and hyperdrive; keep them adjacent to their parent systems in the now-familiar two-by-two blocks for the adjacency bonus; and stack Storage Augmentations toward the 110-slot cargo ceiling.

One outlaw-specific wrinkle: pirate station technology merchants sell X-class “suspicious” modules, which roll wildly between brilliant and terrible. They are cheap, gamble-friendly, and the thematic match for the ship, so sprinkle a few in and keep the winners. Standard modules from regulated stations remain the reliable backbone.

Finally, remember that solars are excellent scrap. A hunting session produces surplus ships whose bodies, wings, and sails feed future builds, so hoard the parts that match your target design even when the ship wearing them is a C-class you would never fly.

Is the Solar Ship Worth It?

If you play the way most players actually play, planet-hopping, base-building, dipping into combat occasionally and long-range exploration rarely, then yes, emphatically. The launch fuel economy is a small tax that compounds across hundreds of landings, and the solar is the only class that abolishes it while remaining a fully conventional, fully upgradeable ship. Hunters comparing free alternatives should also look at Sentinel interceptors, which cost nothing but a fight on a dissonant planet, but an interceptor cannot be fabricated to spec, and it does not pay your launch fuel bill.

One forward-looking note, clearly labeled as reasoning rather than confirmed fact: the Cosmos update’s announced interstellar free flight would make long cruises between systems a real activity, and a ship that refuels its launch thrusters simply by flying is an obvious beneficiary. Watch the Cosmos guide as the staged patch notes land.

Buy the body shape you love at whatever class you can afford, upgrade or fabricate your way to S, and let every landing after that be somebody else’s problem.

Related Guides

• The Best Ships in No Man’s Sky: Every Type Ranked
• No Man’s Sky S-Class Ships: How to Hunt the Best Rolls
• Exotic Ship Locations: Portals, Glyphs, Coordinates
• Sentinel Interceptor Guide: Claim a Free S-Class Ship
• Freighter Guide: Bases, Fleets, and Frigate Expeditions
• Cosmos Update: The Complete Anniversary Guide
• Every No Man’s Sky Update in 2026