A Walk to the Stars

A Walk to the Stars is exactly what it says: a walk… to the stars. Sit back in your chair, relax, and enjoy watching your very first rocket leave the ground. Learn how it works, then, step by step, leave Earth behind, find your way around near space, and finally set out for deep space.

This is not a heavy management game, nor a hardcore simulator. It is a walk: every shot is meant to be a painting, every launch a moment to take in.

A real solar system

The solar system in A Walk to the Stars is not a backdrop. The Sun, the planets and their moons move along their real orbits, computed from real astronomical data, at their true scale. The sky above the launch pad is the real sky.

Your rockets obey the same laws. Every launch is computed from the rocket you designed — its mass, its thrust, its stages — and follows a real trajectory, from lift-off to orbit.

Built on real data

The planets and their orbits — positions computed from NASA/JPL orbital data; the Moon follows JPL Horizons ephemerides (DE441).
The night sky — NASA Goddard's Deep Star Maps 2020, built from the Hipparcos, Tycho-2 and Gaia star catalogues (ESA).
The worlds themselves — the Sun, the planets, Earth, the Moon and Saturn's rings from Solar System Scope maps based on NASA data; Phobos and Deimos from the Viking missions.
The International Space Station — NASA's own 3D model.
Kourou and French Guiana — the land around the space center comes from Landsat satellite imagery, with coastlines, rivers and lakes from OpenStreetMap.

The road ahead

The journey starts with a program as real as it gets: the first rockets, the first orbits, then the exploration of the solar system. But if the adventure goes on… we'll probably need antimatter or nuclear propulsion to visit Proxima Centauri!