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Quick Answer

An Atlas Pass is a crafted key item that opens sealed doors and locked containers across space stations, planetary outposts, depots, and manufacturing facilities.
There are three tiers: v1, v2, and v3. Each higher tier opens everything the tiers below it do, so v3 is a universal key.
The v1 blueprint most commonly arrives through Atlas Path story progression at an Atlas Interface, and can also come from alien NPC encounters (Gek NPCs are the classic source).
The v2 and v3 blueprints come later, through mission rewards and NPC interactions as you build standing with the galaxy's factions.
Passes are crafted from common materials and are permanent once built. They are not consumed when you use them.
Behind the doors: resource containers, units, upgrade modules, and occasionally a multi-tool or a fresh blueprint.

Overview

Sealed doors show up early. You land at a space station, walk past a door marked with an Atlas symbol, and the prompt tells you that you need a pass you do not have. Those doors stay locked until you craft the matching Atlas Pass, which is gated behind a blueprint rather than behind units. Get the blueprint and a handful of common materials, and that tier is solved permanently.

What an Atlas Pass Actually Is

An Atlas Pass is an inventory item, not a permanent unlock flag. You craft it, it occupies a slot in your exosuit or ship, and you carry it. Approach a sealed door or locked canister of the matching tier and the game checks your inventory, finds the pass, and opens the lock. Nothing is spent, and one pass covers unlimited uses forever.

Since each pass eats a slot, expanding your inventory early makes carrying all three tiers painless. Most players park their passes in the exosuit's general inventory and forget about them.

The locked objects a pass handles fall into a few categories:

Sealed doors inside regulated space stations, usually off the main hall.
Locked canisters and small containers at planetary outposts, trading posts, and shelters.
Secure containers at depots and manufacturing facilities, alongside the ones you crack with explosives.
Occasional locked storage attached to abandoned or derelict structures.

The Three Tiers and What They Open

The tier system is cumulative. A v2 pass opens every v1 lock as well as its own, and a v3 pass opens all three, so carrying v3 means never thinking about this again. Players still collect all three because of timing: the v1 blueprint arrives far earlier, and it covers the majority of locks you will walk past in your first fifty hours.

Pass tier	Opens	Typical source
Atlas Pass v1	The most common sealed doors in space stations, plus small locked canisters and containers at outposts and shelters	Atlas Path progression at an Atlas Interface; alien NPC encounters, classically Gek NPCs on stations
Atlas Pass v2	Everything v1 opens, plus a second tier of locked containers and doors at planetary structures and facilities	Mission rewards and NPC interactions as you progress past the early game
Atlas Pass v3	Everything v1 and v2 open, plus the highest-tier sealed doors and secure containers	Mission rewards and NPC interactions in the mid to late game

If you are ever unsure which tier a specific door needs, walk up to it. The interaction prompt names the required pass directly.

How to Get the Atlas Pass v1 Blueprint

The reliable route is the Atlas Path. Follow the Atlas story markers and warp to systems flagged with the Atlas symbol on your galaxy map. Interacting with an Atlas Interface, the enormous red monolith waiting at the end of those warps, advances the story and hands out rewards along the way, and the v1 blueprint is among them. Our Atlas Path story and endings guide walks through the full sequence.

The second route is NPC conversations. Alien NPCs seated at terminals inside space stations, and the ones you meet at planetary outposts, sometimes hand over a blueprint as a reward for a correct dialogue choice or a gift of the right item. Gek NPCs became the community's go-to source for v1 specifically, though which NPC gives what is not fixed. Talk to every alien you find, keep a small stock of trade goods for gifting, and blueprints accumulate on their own.

Neither route is fast to force. Keep progressing the story and keep talking to NPCs, and the v1 pass shows up without a dedicated farming session.

How to Get the v2 and v3 Blueprints

The higher tiers follow the same shape but land later. They come from mission rewards and from NPC interactions rather than from a single scripted moment you can point to on a checklist. Mission boards on space stations, faction missions, and the ongoing story all feed into it.

No vendor reliably sells them, and there is no shortcut worth chasing. The tiers arrive as you play, roughly in step with your standing across the Gek, Korvax, and Vy'keen. If a v2 door is blocking something you want right now, note the location and come back later rather than grinding for it.

How to Craft an Atlas Pass

Once the blueprint is learned, crafting works like any other item.

Open your inventory and select an empty slot in your exosuit or ship.
Choose the craft option and find the Atlas Pass under your known products.
Supply the required materials. Atlas Passes are built from ordinary, easily farmed resources rather than anything exotic, so the crafting cost is not the barrier.
Confirm, and the pass appears in that slot.

If the craft option is greyed out, the recipe panel shows exactly which material you are short on. Refining common ore into the processed materials the recipe wants covers most gaps. Our crafting and refining basics guide covers that pipeline if you have not set up a refiner yet.

Craft one of each tier as you unlock them. There is no benefit to holding duplicates.

What's Behind the Sealed Doors

Atlas Pass rooms are loot rooms, not story rooms. Inside a sealed space station door you typically find storage containers holding resources and often a decent stack of units. Locked canisters at outposts yield trade goods, crafting materials, and sometimes upgrade modules worth installing or selling for nanites. Occasionally a room contains a multi-tool on a wall rack or a blueprint terminal.

None of it is required progression. The value is cumulative rather than dramatic: a steady drip of free resources and modules every time you land somewhere new, at zero cost once the pass is crafted.

Other Items Worth Knowing

Atlas Passes sit alongside a long list of key items and materials. The resources and items index covers what each one does.

FAQ

How do I get Atlas Pass v1?

Learn the blueprint, then craft it. The blueprint most often comes from following the Atlas Path and interacting with an Atlas Interface, and it can also be handed over by alien NPCs during station or outpost conversations. Once learned, craft the pass from common materials in any free inventory slot.

Do I need v2 and v3?

Not urgently. The v1 pass covers the majority of locks a new player encounters. The higher tiers unlock progressively rarer doors and containers, and they arrive naturally through mission rewards as you play. Treat them as a bonus rather than a goal.

Are Atlas Passes reusable?

Yes. A pass is never consumed. Craft it once, keep it in your inventory, and it opens matching locks indefinitely. The only ongoing cost is the inventory slot it occupies.

What's behind sealed doors?

Storage containers with resources and units, upgrade modules, and occasionally a multi-tool or a blueprint. Useful, but not story-critical.

Can I get one without doing the Atlas Path?

Blueprints can come from NPC interactions independently of Atlas Path progression, so it is possible. It is also unpredictable. Players who skip the Atlas story entirely may wait a long time for the v1 blueprint to appear from conversations alone.

Key Takeaways

Atlas Passes are permanent crafted keys, not consumables, so one of each tier is all you will ever need.
The tiers stack, meaning v3 opens everything and v1 covers the most common locks you meet early.
The v1 blueprint follows the Atlas Path and alien NPC conversations; v2 and v3 trail in through mission rewards later.
Crafting is trivial once the blueprint is learned, since the recipes use ordinary materials rather than rare ones.
Treat sealed doors as steady bonus loot rather than gated progression, and pick them up as you pass through rather than hunting them down.

No Man's Sky Atlas Pass Guide: How to Get v1, v2 & v3