This week marks 10 years of the Kerbal Space Program, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. Maybe it's because for its first few years, Kerbal lived as a rough-hewn alpha version on its own launcher; version 1.0 didn't appear until 2015; maybe the reason Kerbal doesn't feel 10 years old is that it entered the canon of great PC games so quickly

It's not.

After years of development by teams scattered around the world, Kerbal's developer, Squad, finally ended its space program and moved on to help develop a sequel.

"This is the last big version of KSP1. We conclude our celebrations with this big version," said Nestor Gomez, head of production. Players are going to love this version. There are a lot of great features and we are excited about them."

One of the big features added in the anniversary update, 1.12, is a maneuver tool that makes it easy to plan more complex interplanetary flights without mods.

"The average gamer struggles to understand astrophysics and how to get from Kerbin to Mun or to Duna or other planets," says programmer Jamie Leighton. In this anniversary edition, players can say, 'I want to go from this planet to this planet with this ship. I still have to pilot it. But it's for people who want to use it.'"

There are other additions that may not be life-changing, but will make longtime Kerbal players very happy. For example, rotating docking port collars to line up ships more precisely, and redecorating Kerbal's planetary surfaces to make them more beautiful.

The update will be released with Kerbal's anniversary on Thursday, but that's not the end for KSP. In fact, it will be ported to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year, with many of the developers moving on to work on Kerbal Space Program 2.

"Several of our team members are already helping with KSP2," Gomez said. 'It could be a year or more before we actually provide content for KSP2. So we have been in this transition for a long time. Interaction between the teams is slowly increasing. That's the plan; we're all going to work together to make KSP2 great. For all of us, we are very excited about this next stage."