Right from the start of the adventure, Starfield gives players almost total freedom, allowing them to follow the main quests or do their own thing and explore the farthest reaches of the Milky Way
As the game is set in a fictional future, many may wonder what’s going on on Earth and if it is possible to explore it to see with their own eyes how our home planet is faring. As it happens, it is possible to do so, but you’d better steel yourself before traveling to the planet where humanity flourished before settling on other planets.
How to Reach and Explore Earth in Starfield
Reaching Earth and exploring it is one of the easiest things to do in Starfield, as it can be accomplished as soon as you reach New Atlantis for the first time and deliver the first Artifact to Constellation.
To reach our home planet, all you need to do is open the Spacemap from the menu, highlight the Sol system that’s close to the Alpha Centauri system where Constellation is based, pick planet Earth, and set your course.
Once in the vicinities of Earth, you can open up the menu again to pick a landing site and start exploring the planet. Unfortunately, it is deserted, and all you will find on it are unpopulated biomes and the occasional space pirate group.
While you are told that humanity has abandoned Earth at some point by the loading screen tooltip, what really happened on Earth can be learned after completing the In Their Footsteps main story mission.
SPOILER ALERT – Avoid reading on if you want to find out about Earth’s fate in Starfield by yourself
After completing this mission, you will get the key to the Nova Galactic Research Station on the Moon, where you can learn about an AI connected to an experimental grav drive. Your findings on the Moon will lead you to Cape Canaveral’s NASA facility on Earth, where you will learn how the first grav drive developed by Doctor Victor Aiza after coming into contact with an Artifact caused the planet’s atmosphere dissipation, forcing a mass exodus from the planet between 2149 and 2199, and millions of deaths.
