No Man’s Sky: How to Farm Stellar Ice and Contaminated Metal (Cosmos Update)

Stellar Ice and Contaminated Metal are two separate resources introduced with the Cosmos update in No Man’s Sky, and each one is collected in a completely different way. Stellar Ice comes from ice comets that you harvest and then refine, while Contaminated Metal is pulled straight out of space debris with your mining tool.

Quick answer: Fit a Corvette-class starship with the new Tractor Beam, break ice comets in an Ice Field to collect Stellar Geodes, then process those geodes at a trading outpost to get Condensed Stellar Ice. For Contaminated Metal, fly to Minor Wreckage flagged as Space Junk and mine the salvage directly with your Mining Tool.

What you need before farming Stellar Ice

Stellar Ice requires hardware that older ships did not use. You need a Corvette-class starship equipped with the Tractor Beam, a brand-new part added in the Cosmos update. The Tractor Beam costs 350,000 credits plus the required crafting materials, and it lets you pull valuable resources out of different kinds of debris.

You also want your Gravitino Coil ready, since that is what carries the Stellar Geodes back to your ship after you break the comets. Without the Tractor Beam fitted, you cannot complete this loop.

How to farm Stellar Ice in No Man’s Sky

Open your Star Chart map from inside your starship and look for a planet listed as an Ice Field. If your current system has no Ice Field, warp to another system until you find one.

Fly to the Ice Field. You will see clusters of asteroids around it. Get out of your ship and look closely at the field for comets that are partly white and partly blue, since these stand out from the plain asteroid rock nearby.

Destroy the white-and-blue comets to release Stellar Geodes. Do not destroy the Geodes themselves. The comet is the shell you break; the Geode is the reward you want to keep intact.

Use the Gravitino Coil to carry the Stellar Geodes back to your starship.

Head to a trading outpost and take the Stellar Geodes to processing. Processing the geodes there is what turns them into Condensed Stellar Ice.

You know the loop worked when the geodes convert into Condensed Stellar Ice in your inventory after processing. If you end up with nothing, the most common causes are destroying the Geode along with the comet, or trying to harvest without the Tractor Beam fitted to a Corvette-class ship.

How to farm Contaminated Metal in No Man’s Sky

Open your Star Chart map and search for Minor Wreckage. The signal type you are looking for is Space Junk, which marks the debris that contains Contaminated Metal.

Travel to the flagged debris. Once you reach the salvage, aim your Mining Tool at it and mine the wreckage directly.

Collect the Contaminated Metal as it drops. Unlike Stellar Ice, there is no processing stage here, so you do not need to carry anything back to a processor or trading outpost.

Stellar Ice vs Contaminated Metal: key differences

Resource	Where to find it	Tool needed	Extra step
Stellar Ice	Ice Field planets (Star Chart)	Tractor Beam on a Corvette, plus Gravitino Coil	Process Stellar Geodes at a trading outpost
Contaminated Metal	Minor Wreckage flagged as Space Junk (Star Chart)	Mining Tool	None; mined directly

The main thing to remember is that Stellar Ice is a multi-step harvest that ends at a trading outpost, while Contaminated Metal is a one-and-done mine from marked debris. Keep the Tractor Beam and Gravitino Coil ready for the ice runs, and simply watch the Star Chart signal type when you go hunting for the metal.