Frontier Developments, the game studio that developed and published "Elite Dangerous," announced that the game's first 2018 update called "Beyond – Chapter One" is scheduled to release on Feb. 27.

The announcement was made via a community thread on Feb. 20 started by Will Flanagan, community manager at Frontier alongside a cinematic trailer of the upcoming expansion. Last year, Thargoids invaded the Milky Way galaxy in the game. The upcoming update will continue with the Thargoids invasion, revealing the reason for their domination as well as their respective goals. This time, however, players will be able to fight off the conquering aliens as the first chapter of "Beyond" will feature a new combat spaceship named the "Chieftain," developed by Lakon Spaceways for the Alliance faction, which players may use to directly confront Thargoids.

According to Eurogamer, "Beyond – Chapter One" introduces new visual updates to make the game more appealing to players. Moreover, the game's Crime and Punishment System has been overhauled, tackling the game's response to Commanders who bully other players. There will be a new artificial intelligence (AI)-controlled Advance Tactical Response fleet that will pursue offenders. The update will also introduce new Wing Missions for up to four player ships wherein Commanders select the Wing Missions from a mission board that their Wingmates can accomplish.

Eurogamer said that first chapter of "Beyond" will see an improvement in "Elite Dangerous'" Engineering system that features a boosted statistics for Engineering trades. Furthermore, the expansion will have the following updates — a new Trade Data overlay, new Galnet Audio feature and a new onboard computer voice known as Vince.

"Beyond – Chapter One" is free for all players. It will release concurrently for personal computer (PC), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.