Last week, Kerbal Space Program publisher Private Division took on the challenge of recreating SpaceX's mission to the International Space Station in-game, endorsed by the US space agency NASA. This week it's the European Space Agency's turn, as Private Division announced that a new free update called Shared Horizons will add two new "keystone missions" to the game, based on ESA's BepiColombo and Rosetta missions.

The first mission, BepiColombo, is a recreation of the joint ESA/JAXA mission to send a probe to Mercury, known as Moho in KSP. The real-world mission involves six flybys and orbital insertions if all goes according to plan, but the game also requires landing on the planet and completing a variety of in-game experiments based on real scientific missions.

Rosetta is a tribute to ESA's 2004-16 Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko mission and is also based on real-world missions and experiments. [Here at the European Space Agency, many of our engineers and scientists are familiar with KSP. Rosetta and BepiColombo are both very complex missions with unique challenges, but each has proven to be very rewarding for ESA and the global scientific community." For this reason, we are very pleased that these groundbreaking science missions will be experienced not only on Earth, but also on Kerbin."

He stated.

Along with new missions, Kerbal Space Program: Shared Horizons will also add an Ariane 5 rocket, ESA-themed space suits, new parts, and new experiments. can play for free.