Greetings Citizens,

You’ve pushed Star Citizen to $37 million in crowd funding! And that amount is only one of the numbers I’m having trouble believing today. Let me share another one with you: 4,924. That’s the number of Organizations that have been created since the new system went online less than twelve hours ago. The breadth of the Star Citizen community continues to astonish: you’ve taken up our charge and are creating something truly unique.

At $37 million, you’ve unlocked a new star system at the center of a nebula:

• Tanga System – At the heart of an unusual rectangular planetary nebula, lies Tanga System. The inner planets were engulfed as the star entered the red giant phase. The expanded habitable zone unfroze a small world on the former outer ring and for several hundred million years made it habitable. Life began to emerge and was just reaching a primitive state when the star collapsed into a white dwarf, throwing the planet back into a deep freeze, then blasting the atmosphere away with the resulting planetary nebula. That’s how the system was found: Only two worlds (speculation that there could have been three to four more) but both are dead planets with no atmosphere.

The last poll was a hard-fought contest, but it looks like the explorers continue to have an advantage: the winning selection is an “unexplored natural wonder.” As a result, we’re adding a new system (based on a recent, real-world discovery) for you to discover. We intend to stock it with some impressive surprises for the explorers who manage to locate it! Here’s the description:

• UDS-2943-01-22 System – Breaking news: UEE astrophysicists based at the famed Klavs observatory station have utilized advanced telescopy and other remote sensing technologies to identify a truly unusual star system on the fringes of known space. The object, once thought to be a single massive star, is actually a trinary star consisting of two white dwarfs and an active pulsar orbiting one another. Because of the complex gravitic factors at work, it is now believed that a jump point leading to the system likely exists in or near explored human space. Beyond the bizarre stellar makeup, the composition of the system is all but unknown. Could planets exist in this carefully balanced web? What else might have been drawn there? One thing is certain: the first Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!

Now it’s time to vote for the final system stretch goal, which will be unlocked at $40 million. If past polls are an indication, it should be a close race between the three options. We have some interesting ideas for developing each one, so you can rest assured that whatever you select it will add a cool new facet to the Star Citizen world!

Thank you for your continued support. Whether you’re part of a thousand-person Organization or planning to explore the galaxy on your own, 2014 is going to be the biggest year yet for Star Citizen.

— Chris Roberts