(Update for Celebration of Early Astronomy 8 – March 30, 2026)
What jump range is needed?
To fly the route in your own ship there is a 77.06 Ly jump you will need to be able to get to/from HD 39340. That can be done in a ship with 38.54 Ly base jump range using Premium grade FSD Injection. However, you will likely want a larger jump range as a good portion of the expedition is in fairly sparse regions, and routing with just 38.54 jump range may be frustrating. – If your ship is not able to meet these jump ranges however there will be carrier support both an early shuttle and late shuttle for each leg that can assist in getting to any official basecamp waypoints.
What kind of distances per week can I expect?
I generally try to keep the weekly distance needed to around 5,000 Ly to 6,000 Ly in a basecamp to basecamp line. I try to also keep the path for visiting the “Main Waypoints” under that distance as well where possible. Visiting “Optional Waypoints” as well may at times go further. The average weekly distance for the expedition for the Main Waypoint path is 5073.40 Ly, with the average weekly distance for just basecamp to basecamp being 3842.66. – One leg, Leg 5 is 9,856.27 Ly, but it is a two week long leg, so the weekly average remains below 5kLy. One other leg, the final leg is 7,233.41 for the main waypoints, but just 1,895.03 for basecamp to basecamp as it’s a mostly U-shaped leg.
What events will there be?
We strive to have a variety of events throughout the expedition. There will at each basecamp be mass jumps, two, at different times of the day to support various schedules. We will also have some mid-leg events as well as events before and after the basecamp mass jumps. Those can include, but are not limited to: Anti-Xeno Fighting, SRV Races, SLF Races, PvP Fights of varying themes, Team Mining, and Mountain Hikes.
Community members are also more than welcome to run their own events along the route as well!
What ships besides my exploration ship should I bring?
(DETAILS COMING SOON)
Not all the waypoints are catalog objects?
While we focus on catalog objects in the in-game universe, we do also additionally feature other unique, helpful, lore based, and/or interesting sites within the in-game galaxy, especially for legs where the selection of catalog objects becomes sparse as you get further from Sol.
Any third-party apps needed?
We don’t require the use of any third-party apps for this expedition.
One new promising app that we would recommend people to check out is Explorarium can be found at https://github.com/CMDRRegza/Explorarium. The main point of The Explorarium is to revitalize and rediscover systems that have been completely ignored or undocumented, there are 172 million systems that we have access to thanks to Spansh and from that giant list they have extracted a total of 1,332 systems deemed worthy of exploring (and still growing!) – The app lists these potential systems for scouting. There are plenty to scout along the CEA8 route, and one of our waypoints with colliding rings, Eok Hypue ZO-Z b33-0 was even discovered using this tool!
We also do recommend being able to submit your data to aid other explorers and contribute to the mapping of the galaxy. What tool you use to do that is up to you, but popular apps for that are ED Market Connector and EDDiscovery. The more people contributing data to the databases means the more informed the community can be as a whole as to what is out there and help tools like Explroarium continue to find new interesting systems to discover.
Will there be carrier support? + Can I bring my carrier?
Yes, official carrier support will be provided by the following carriers
- C.E.A – Kirkbride, owned by CMDR Kezika
- C.E.A – Kami’s Lookout, owned by CMDR Niamh Kaminari
- C.E.A – Pinel, squadron carrier of [CEAK]
Additionally, other players are welcome to bring their own carriers along, and we can also arrange for them to also volunteer as additional support carriers.
This question will be updated with more information as the expedition approaches with more specifics as to the role each carrier will play on the expedition.
Is the Mass Jump in Open or Private Group, and is it in Live or Legacy Galaxy?
All official expedition events will be in the Live galaxy, in Odyssey mode.
The events themselves will take place in the private group “Kezika,” so please send a friend request and request to join group CMDR Kezika in advance of the expedition so we can easily get you into instance with events. Please do it in advance of the events, I will not always be running events from that account, so it may not always be possible for me to add you to it mid-event.
How does the Mass Jump work, what is the process?
At the start of the event we will hang out while people gather, either on the surface if it is a surface basecamp or on the carrier if it is a space based basecamp. We will also be in a voice channel in our Discord.
We will set it up so that the mass jump will happen at the top of an hour, that way it is easy for everyone to synchronize using the in-game clock on the ship’s HUD.
At 10 minutes to the hour we will gather 5km above the surface, or out of mass lock range of the carrier with some buffer. We will announce the specific system we are all jumping to in Local Chat, System Chat, in-voice in the Discord, and in the cea8-info-and-faq channel in Discord.
At 2 minutes to the hour I will ask for radio silence and will begin the countdown process. Do not charge your FSD in advance, when the clock hits the hour we will all engage our FSD and throttle up no boosting please at the destination system.
I’m running behind can you wait a few minutes for me?
Please endeavor to be on time. Delays can cause confusion so we stick to the original schedule unless there are issues like a game crash or something like that outside our control.
Is there a place I can watch the mass jumps and events if I can’t make them?
Yes, I will broadcast each one live on my Twitch and YouTube channels at https://twitch.tv/NiamhKami and https://www.youtube.com/@niamhkami respectively. There may be some other streamers on the expedition as well that may stream it as well, and I will announce if any of them are streaming a particular event at the time in the Discord. – (Please note that your voice will not be heard on the live broadcast for privacy and safety reasons)