Frontier Developments has announced that the fourth and final major update of Elite Dangerous' current season, Beyond, will launch in beta for all PC players on October 30th, with a full release to follow "soon" after.
Beyond: Chapter Four, as the latest update is known, marks the conclusion of Elite Dangerous' 2018 season, which has largely focussed on expanding and improving existing areas of the space sim, rather than on introducing entirely new features.
To that end, Beyond has already brought major changes to crime and punishment in Elite Dangerous, hopefully making the multiplayer game less vexing for newcomers, as well as improvements to Engineering. It's also introduced new ships, including the Chieftain, new ship-launched fighters, and welcome features such as Galnet Audio, which reads out the latest in-game news, providing a friendly voice in the lonely emptiness of space.